Social Ties and Subjective Performance Evaluations:An Empirical Investigation

We empirically investigate possible distortions in subjective performance evaluations. A keyhypothesis is that evaluations are more upward biased the closer the social ties betweensupervisor and appraised employee. We test this hypothesis with a company data set from acall center organization which contains not only subjective assessments but also severalmore objective measures of performance. Controlling for these performance measures, wefind strong evidence that evaluations are upwards biased in smaller teams and someevidence that supervisors give better ratings to employees they themselves have evaluatedbefore.[...]