Why were self-reported evaluations of productivity used instead of objective measurements?
At the beginning of the study, representatives from Xerox made it clear that, in their opinion, self-reported evaluation would be the most useful information these employees could provide. The creative nature of the high-salaried job functions created broad variety in the amount and quality of job output. Quality of product meant far more than the number of data bits entered. An attempt to quantify individual output would have been somewhat meaning less in any event, because much of the output in this installation was based on team effort rather than individual production.
