Overcoming Aspects of Social Disablement in Data

When the performance of an employee is evaluated, ideally there are no externalities to complicate the analysis. If the employee has a computer that is constantly freezing up - or the servers in the company frequently operate slowly - the employee's performance data will reflect the functionality and effectiveness of these systems. If the company occupies a highly competitive market, declining sales data is attributable at least in part to competition rather than the behaviours of employees. If managers implement significant restructuring, the outcomes would be apparent in the performance data of employees. Although it is desirable for performance data to be free of externalities, in practice this scenario seems unlikely. In performance, there is usually "internal association" of data - that is to say, the metrics are attributed to the behaviours of employees internally. But there are also "external antecedents" or determinants outside the direct control of employees. Since a worker tends to exercise little personal autonomy in many modern production settings, it is necessary to recognize how the data collected might be "internally disassociated": it is disconnected from the broader reality of production and also of the individual.