In this academic critical essay, the article Investigating the Sustainability of a Sustained 360 Process by Frank Shipper will be discussed and evaluated. In 2009, Frank Shipper makes a wonderful attempt to analyze past investigations, where 360-degree feedback is concerned, and to clear up the reasons of managerial effectiveness that is usually caused by the 360 process.
The author underlines the crucial importance of this research because of the fact that only a single feedback intervention served as a major ground for many past studies, and the process under consideration has not considered the extremely important need of follow up assistance.
A meta-analysis and other composite studies cannot describe the significance of improvements, and a sustained 360 process has been investigated at all (Shipper, 2009, p. 1).
I shall agree with Frank Shipper concerning the necessity to continue investigations on the field of 360-degree feedback and admit that the chosen by the author way is rather helpful and interesting: the use of past researches and the ideas of sophisticated people makes this article stronger; and his personal judgment of the situation proves his confidence in own steps and suggestions.
Investigating the Sustainability of a Sustained 360 Process is divided into several logical parts, which give clear information about the essence of a sustained 360 process, its development during a certain period of time, its effectiveness, and its influence on other spheres of work.
Introduction aims at describing past investigations of 360 process effectiveness; Method explains the choice of a middle-level management development program; Results, Discussion, and Limitations inform about the facts, which have been obtained as a result of author’s personal investigation on this field and the limitations, which have been used in this investigation; and Conclusions is a perfectly arranged part of the article that proves how valuable a sustained 360 process may be for any business practice.
The article under discussion will be much useful for managers and other employees, who are eager to improve the arrangement of their work and managerial effectiveness that comes from a single intervention of feedback.
One of the first steps, which have been taken by the author, is the evaluation of past investigations, conducted by various sophisticated writers. Mr. Shipper uses the works of the 1990s and the 2000s and analyses the ideas and suggestions, which were offered at 1995, and their implementations at the beginning of the 2000s.
Torrington et al (2005, p. 63) explain that “there is a process of continuous feedback between the different stages of human resource planning activities, as they are all interdependent”.
It turns out to be crucially important to develop such a system that could be responsible for improvement of the results at any working place, communication between the employers and between the employees, and proper self-organization that may lead to success.
One of the best performance management models emphasizes the presence of 360-degree feedback every six months in order to develop plans within an organization (Lonsdale, 1998, p. 313).
The 360 process is the system that has to be applied to all employees within one organization (Bacal, 2003, p. 8), and as a standalone system, it should have several obligatory components, which can make it unique and meaningful.
Shipper (2009), as many other researchers, concentrates on the importance of self-rating component that looks at differences between the workers and prevents workers’ overestimation of own strengths and weaknesses (Eichinger & Lombardo, 2003, 2004; Frisch et al., 2001; & Rogers, et al., 2002).
In Investigating the Sustainability of a Sustained 360 Process, the author describes his investigation that helps to develop relations between managers and their employers in order to be able to share problems and offer different ideas to solve them.
The results of the investigation, described in the article turn out to be similar to many other investigations and prove once again that the 360 process allows to conduct appraisal of employers from different perspectives and to check their competencies, attitude to work and to their own collaborators (Momeni, 2009 & Younger et al., 2007).
Such agreement to the already established and recognized results may be regarded as one of the strength of the article and the investigations, conducted in order to create it.
Another strong point of this article is author’s individual approach for accomplishment of the settled assignment: the CEO is one of the major participants of the process, the results, gathered after 360-degree feedback, are analysed on two levels corporate and divisional, and the purposes, which are obligatory for both levels and established according to the demands of each manager within the organization under consideration and discussed during the annual review.
These discussions may serve as another significant reason that proves the correctness and effectiveness of the process or, at least, prove the recognition of the chosen process and corporate participation of people, who are interested in the results, which lead to success, improvement, and benefits.
If we take into consideration the fact that each person works, enlarges own level of knowledge, and develops day by day in order to get profits and benefits for own existence, we realize that 360-degree feedback should also interest them just because it promotes certain development and work improvements.
I truly believe the article by Frank Shipper is strong enough, however, a couple of the limitations, which are present, have a bit negative impact on the study. First of all, the process is not randomized, this is why it fails to meet the demands of true and reliable experimental designs.
Secondly, time limitations did not allow to meet long-term demands, and dynamic operating conditions were under the influence of temporary changes. And even the fact that annual review’s discussions were honest and open, they are partially documented in the study.
It is necessary to mention that the purpose of 360-degree feedback is not to astonish a person by means of unpredictability or unawareness (Wimer, 2002), and Shipper underlines the necessity of the preparations, their proper planning, and time to analyse the results.
Another significant purpose of 360-degree feedback is to identify the factors, which may help leaders to improve their work, ratings, and impact their workers (Yost & Plunkett, 2002). In the article, too much attention is paid to the necessity of CEOs and managers’ presence during the process to evaluate the effectiveness and underline the points, which have to be improved.
Managerial effectiveness is the key point in the 360 process (Shipper, 2009; Sears et al., 2006; & Collins, 2000), and Mr. Shipper proves this fact in this article, but still cannot agree to Peter Goodge (2005), who evaluate the possibilities of 360-degree feedback from only one perspective, a developmental functioning.
In general, the style of writing, chosen by the author, is winning and clear: in order to prove something to the reader, it is obligatory to present a statement, conduct research, provide a discussion, and admit that the offered statement is correct and meaningful.
The article by Frank Shipper is an excellent combination of interesting content and clear language. To my mind, the ideas of why 360-degree feedback, also known as multisource feedback or just the 360 process, is important and influential on managerial effectiveness are perfectly presented and explained in Investigating the Sustainability of a Sustained 360 Process.
Frank Shipper, an author of Investigating the Sustainability of a Sustained 360 Process, demonstrates his perfect skills in writing and investigating one of the most controversial and discussed issues of Human Resource Management field.
His desire to continue studies concerning the 360 process because of lack of concrete facts from other investigators demonstrates his readiness to the work, his abilities to focus of the main details, and his attention to the past studies.
Clear English, properly organized structure, and effective examples and researches make the article under consideration really strong and educative for the reader.
The peculiar feature of this article is its diverse nature because it may be useful for managers and CEOs of different organization, students, who want to enlarge their knowledge about the 360 process and its effectiveness, and researchers, who are going to touch upon the same questions and improve the already achieved results, taking into consideration the conditions, which have been neglected earlier.
On my opinion, this article is one of the most effective and educative dues to its proper content, structure, and attitude of the author to enlarge our knowledge but not just to present one more theme for discussion.
Reference List
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Collins, ML 2000 The Think Book of 360 Feedback: A Manager’s Guide. Think Book Publishing, Bend, OR.
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Shipper, F 2009, ‘Investigating the Sustainability of a Sustained 360 Process’, Franklin P. Perdue School of Business. Salisbury University, Salisbury.
Torrington, D, Hall, L, & Taylor, S 2005 Human Resource Management. Pearson Education Limited, Harlow.
Wimer, S 2002, ‘The Dark Side of 360-Degree Feedback: The Popular HR Intervention Has an Ugly Side’, Training & Development, vol. 56, no. 9, 37-44.
Yost, PR & Plunkett, MM 2002, ‘Turn Business Strategy into Leadership Development: Boeing’s Seven Secrets for Capturing the Development Opportunities That Pass You by Every Day’, Training & Development, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 49+.
Younger, J, Smallwood, N, & Ulrich, D 2007, ‘Developing Your Organization’s Brand as a Talent Developer’, Human Resource Planning, vol. 30, no. 2, pp.21-29.