The Research On Performance Appraisal Purposes Of Enterprises In Transition

Since China started economic reform and began opening to the outside world, the country has entered a new transformable age. In this transformable context, management styles and methods of enterprises have been constantly changed. Among those managerial changes, it is special about the changes on organizational or employee performance appraisal (PA). In order to company with increasing market pressure, all kinds of enterprises have given up "communal pot" and then adopted enforceable and rigid PA, which has to a certain extent promoted organizational performance. With the strength of appraisal increases, however, many problems occur in this appraisal method. They negatively influence enterprises'development and lead to the appearance of the need of a new PA. Thus, which is the best efficient PA method during the transformable age? The present research will make a try to resolve the problem through studying PA purposes.The present research reviewed related literatures, and then conducted three empirical studies. They respectly examined the relationships between organizational characteristics and PA purposes (chapter 4), tested the different impact of PA purposes on employee reactions (chapter 5), and established the relationship between PA purposes and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and examined the influencing mechanisms of PA purposes (mediating and moderating) (chapter 6). Main conclusions are following:Firstly, ownership, industry and external competition significantly influenced performance appraisal purposes. Specifically, comparing to state-owned and private enterprises, foreign-invested enterprise have bigger strengths in both developmental PA and evaluative PA. This indicated that domestic enterprises should increase appraisal streangth by learning from foreign-invested enterprises in order to promote appriasl effectiveness; the implement strength of developmental PA in high-tech enterprises is bigger than in non-high-tech enterprises. The reason is that performance characteristic of the knowledge worker is professional. Thus, it is very difficult for managers to rate the knowledge worker through evaluative appraisal. The right way is to provide feedback and developmental and training opportunities to attain enterprises'purposes. As the competition can be transferred from top to bottom, the market competition degree is positively related to the strength of evaluative PA. On the one hand, this conclusion brings an important implication for reforming state-owned enterprises in China. To keep their stress and vitality, competitive degree should be gradually improved in state-owned enterprises. On the other hand, when the pressure is oversize, negative impact may appear such as Foxconn Jumping Event. At this time, managers should try to reduce pressure by adoptin some measures such as hommization enterprise culture, leader-member exchange relationship with high quality.Secondly, the influencing extents of four appraisal purposes on appraisal reactions are significantly different. Specifically, employees have higher PA justice perceptions and task performance when organizations implement "work along both lines" PA purpose rather than other PA purposes. Employees have lowest PA satisfaction in "laissez-faire" PA purpose. Overall, "work along both lines" PA purpose can lead to positive employee PA reactions. Comparing to "laissez-faire" and "settle old accounts in future" PA purpose, "point out a pathway" and "work along both lines" PA purpose positively influenced OCB. All of these conclusions indicate that employee will have positive outcomes when their organizations implement highly developmental performance appraisal.Thirdly, Perceived social exchange fully mediated the relationship between "point out a pathway" PA purpose and OCB, but the mediating role of organizational identification did not exsit. This implied that emoloyees focused more on whether or not their organizations established long-term and social exhange relationships with them in transition. Based on the relationshios, they would then decide whether or not conduct OCB.Fourthly, Traditionality negatively moderated the relationship between "point out a pathway" PA purpose and perceived social exchange in such a way that their relationship was weaker for employees with high traditionality and it was stronger for lowly traditional employees. This brings important implications for Chinese employee appraisal. As the generations after 80s and 90s have lower traditional cultural value and are becoming core part of employees, it is more helpful for their social exchange perceptions to implement "point out a pathway" performance appraisal. Meanwhile, learning orientation positively moderated the relationship between "point out a pathway" and organizational identification in such a way that their relationship was stronger for employees with high learning orientation and it was weaker for employees with low learning orientation.Based on the above conclusions and management practice in China, the present research analyzed transferring process of PA purpose and proposed three transferring stages of PA purposes. We argued that "point out a pathway" is the future directions of PA purposes. Some principals and methods were proposed about how to successfully carry out "point out a pathway" PA purpose based on cases from foreign enterprises. Finally, we summarized the whole research and indicated research limitations and directions for the future study.