Do You See What I See? An Exploration of Congruence in Ratings From Multiple Perspectives¹

This paper provides a comparative analysis of behavioral observations made on 152 service providers in a business advisory and professional services firm from 5 distinctly different ratings sources (self, direct reports, peers, supervisor, and clients). Results focused on differences in ratings level and degree of congruence with self‐assessments by observer type. The data suggested that service providers and their clients may have a different perceptual frame of reference than do internal observers (e.g., direct reports, peers, and supervisors). Moreover, congruence in self‐others' ratings was found to be a significant predictor of performance assessments from the same observer source. Implications of these results for the use of multirater appraisal systems are discussed.