Accounting for performance: Case studies of relative performance evaluation in Egypt and England.

Relative Performance Evaluation "RPE" is a performance evaluation and reward scheme which have been receiving a growing attention from academic and professionals (Holmstrom 1982, Frederickson 1992, Conyon and Gregg 1994, and Defond & Park 1999). Under RPE rewards for managers and executives are set upon their performance compared to that of their peers. Holmstrom (1982) introduced the basic model of RPE founded on agent-principal assumptions. In that model, the peers' performance was seen to provide information about the agent's unobservable effort. Fredrickson (1992) suggested that RPE could satisfy economic and psychological needs of employee. In this study, an attempt is made to depart from the universal agency perspective and to adopt a contingent framework. The research arguments were developed from an identification of the discrepancies and gaps in the literature of RPE, overlooked complications and issues in the UK practice, relating the debate about RPE to the wider accounting literature of performance measurements and evaluation (Emmanuel et.al. 1990, Kaplan & Atkinson 1998). The aim of this research was to explore the content and context of RPE therefore, the arguments focused on: whether RPE is motivating, the impacts of difficulty of peer group, non financial measures, market measures and varying the form of the rewards on RPE. Case study approach was adopted to examine the research arguments. Data were collected from three companies in Egypt and one company in England. Access was partially accidental but turned to provide four different cases. Three cases were developed in Egypt including: Trade (a public company), Dairy (private company) and Steel (joint venture) and the English company was United Utilities (private company). Data were collected by questionnaire, interviews and other documentary sources of the companies. The research findings suggest associations between RPE and target's difficulty, using non financial but not varying rewards. Competition and type of ownership and the organisational culture were influential on RPE.