Bringing age into view: discovering age-related effects on employee-supervisor (dis)agreement in employability ratings

Purpose For a performance evaluation process to be successful, supervisors and employees should come to a common understanding. While organizations around the world are using multi-source feedback, human resource (HR) research draws predominantly on ratings by supervisors, hence we know little about such (dis)agreement in performance ratings. We re-introduce the lens of self-other agreement (SOA) to the HR literature to explore the agreement between employability self-ratings by employees (E) and the other ratings by supervisors (S). Design/methodology/approach A quantitative discovery approach is used to explore a combined data set of multi-source survey data. Findings A person-centered methodology identified six SOA profiles: two profiles represent self-other agreement (S = E), two profiles represent self-other disagreement in which self-ratings by employees are higher than the other ratings by the supervisors (disagreement type E > S) and two profiles in which the self-ratings are lower than the other ratings (disagreement type E < S). Multiple age effects appeared to be significant predictors of probability of profile membership. Research limitations/implications Following a process of abductive reasoning, we interweave quantitative discovery with theory, resulting in six propositions and discussion of theoretical, methodological, and practical implications. Originality/value Particularly, increased understanding of the age-related causes of SOA is relevant given our work context is characterized by a strongly aging workforce.