Experimental research on employee performance review using knowledge management oriented OKRs approach in comparison to KPI approach

Abstract

Organizations engage in performance evaluations with a number of different tools and purposes, which in turn often resulting in confusion about the true purpose of performance evaluation. However, the use of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is still new in the Thai society. Therefore, this study is to investigate the understanding of Thai employee towards the adoption of OKRs, and to compare the performance with that of working under Key Performance Indicator (KPI). The results revealed that Thai employees were familiar with the working practices under the concept of KPI more than OKRs. This proved that OKRs was still new in the Thai society. It was clear that OKRs facilitates the process of knowledge sharing and exchange of information in the team. However, OKRs requires a team where its members have good knowledge or competence so that they can contribute to the team, as well as with the effective communication channel, and discipline to follow the key results. In other words, work practices under OKRs with no leader as the center will be less effective when team members have less or no competence, lack of effective communication, and no discipline of members.