Research On Enterprise Performance Evaluation System From The Perspective Of Stakeholders

With the development of productivity and market competition, environmental pollution caused by maximizing shareholder value, waste of resources, poor product quality, lack of effective protection of the interests of employees and other issues are more and more serious, which greatly hampered the long-term stable development of enterprises. Stakeholder theory which was developed in the west in 60s of the 20th century considered that any business has many stakeholders, and they carried on special-purpose investment to the company and bear the investment risks. Therefore, the enterprise's survival and development depends on its ability to effectively deal with the relationship among various stakeholders, and shareholders is just only one of them. Theorists and practitioners gradually realized that it is a short-sighted behavior for enterprises if they simply pursue the goal of shareholder value in the production process, regardless of the interests of other stakeholders'requirements. The best way to the long-term survival and prosperity of enterprises is to consider and meet the interests and demands of all important stakeholders. Enterprise and stakeholder has a mutually beneficial relationship. From the perspective of stakeholders, as an supervision system and management system, the enterprise performance evaluation system is not only an enterprise's important self-monitoring, self-restraint, self-evaluation means, but also a vital instrumentation to effectively communicating with stakeholders, coordinating each stakeholder's interests and finally achieving the strategic management goal of enterprise. In this context, the significance of this paper is mainly reflected in the following two aspects:(1) Theoretically, from perspective of stakeholders, the research on corporate performance evaluation system plays an important role for improving enterprise's performance evaluation theory. Under the economic globalization and intensified competition situation, the business environment has undergone profound changes, more and more stakeholders strengthen their relationships with the enterprise. Because these stakeholders put different resources into enterprise in different ways, they must have their own interests, and these different interests and demands need to be conveyed and reflected in a certain way and framework. Based on the requirements of constraint and incentive mechanism and stakeholders'demand differences, enterprise becomes the aggregation of multilateral contractual relationship, its strategic objectives should be clingy stakeholders, all stakeholders should compromise a unified target, that is enterprise's long-term stable development and constant growth of business total value. Regarding this goal, the design and the measurement of enterprise's performance is practical and feasible from the view of stakeholders. Though stakeholder theory gradually developed after 1960s, its core content, which is enterprise performance evaluation, so far has not formed a perfect system framework. Based on analysis of existing literature and enterprise performance evaluation theory basis, this dissertation firstly indicates basic theory of enterprise performance evaluation system in generally from the perspective of stakeholders. Then this dissertation focuses on evaluating subjects, evaluating objects, index, index weights, evaluation criteria, comprehensive evaluation model, etc. These studies will improve existing enterprise performance evaluation theory, and should also provide research foundation for relevant theory, such as motivation theory, distribution theory, etc.(2) Practically, research process and the conclusion have certain reference value to enterprise's performance evaluation at least in the following several aspects:Firstly, it provides reference for the establishment of performance evaluation system. As a guidance of enterprise's operational activities, performance evaluation system needs to consider not only shareholder's benefit in the design process, but also other stakeholders'benefit. Moreover, only enterprise performance evaluation system is actually put into use can business functionality effectively played. If we put it aside, it can only bring cost of waste. Therefore, in the design process of performance evaluation system, we must consider its feasibility and the comparability with other enterprises. Secondly, it is helpful for stakeholders make correct investment decisions.If stakeholders need to conduct accurate investment, they must have a clear understanding of the real situation of enterprise performance. Only in this way can they improve the accuracy of the investment and reduce investment risk. Thirdly, it is in favor of coordinating the conflicts between stakeholders, establishing mutual trust, honesty and win-win cooperation mechanism. As to the interests and demands, there will be similarities and conflicts between different stakeholders. If we can only understand conflicts but not cooperation between different stakeholders, it will possibly bring great transaction cost to enterprises and cause the enterprise to fall into the difficult position. And in the long run, the conflict is temporary, long-term cooperation is mutually beneficial. Stakeholder perspective-based enterprise performance evaluation is not only able to effectively regulate and monitor the behavior of enterprise managers, but also to promote better communication and coordination among stakeholders, so that the business activities can be healthy, stable and orderly. Fourthly, it will help guide the business operations and achieve sustainable development of enterprises. Along with the gradual establishment and improvement of market economy, the enterprise stakeholders concerns more and more, through the analyzing and comparing the protection degree of the interests of the enterprise stakeholders by using performance evaluation system, it can on the one hand strengthen the management and supervision, on the other hand can guide the business activities and enhance their market competitiveness.Generally speaking, a complete evaluation system is made up of subject, object evaluation index, index weighs, the evaluation standards and evaluation method, etc. Through the literature retrieval we found that many experts and scholars have studied enterprise performance evaluation from the perspective of stakeholders, research results are abundant, but there are still some needed for improvement. If we want to completely beyond existing domestic and foreign research results to re-design a set of enterprise performance evaluation system from the perspective of stakeholders, this will not only expend the huge amount of work and duplication of work, but also be difficult to achieve a breakthrough. Therefore, based on existing relatively mature research results and enterprise performance evaluation theory framework, this dissertation conducts a study on enterprise performance evaluation system from the perspective of stakeholders. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Although from the very beginning, the enterprise performance evaluation is executed based on stakeholder's benefit satisfaction degree, the stakeholder it considered is very single. It is until 1990s that the literatures which concentrate on widely stakeholders began to appear. Stakeholder-based performance evaluation will become the mainstream along with the development of stakeholder theory and the strengthening of corporate social responsibility.(2) According to the stakeholder theory, strategic management theory and system management theory, this paper argues that, from the perspective of the stakeholders, enterprise performance evaluation is a tool based on the interests and demands of stakeholders, it is fulfilled through the design of indicators, weights determined, the selection of standard value, the construction of integrated model and other steps these steps. This kind of evaluation can objectively, fairly and accurately measure stakeholders'interests and demands satisfaction degree during certain operation period, and then helps stakeholders to carry on the effective investment decision, and also guides enterprise to improve the management and operation and improve their management levels.(3) Because any enterprise has numerous stakeholders, different stakeholders have different interests and demands, there will be many factors that we should consider during the construction process of stakeholder-based performance evaluation system. In order to make the indictors simple, convenient, and can really play evaluation, orientation, management and forecasting functions, the design of evaluation system followed such principles as target consistency, objectivity, applicability, systemic cost-effectiveness et al.(4) As to evaluating subject, this dissertation divides "source subjects" of performance evaluation into 7 categories which are shareholders, financial institutions, suppliers, customers, employees, government and community and the public. The interests of these stakeholders closely relate to enterprise's overall interests, and all of them have motivation to measure enterprise performance. However, according to actual situation, it is impossible and unrealistic to let each "source subjects" set up an enterprise performance evaluation system. The dissertation argues that "source subjects" may be substituted by "executive subjects" which is an intermediary and composed of chief executive, guidance counselors, executive team and implementation team.(5) As to evaluating objects, based on stakeholder theory and empirical research method, this dissertation analyzes evaluating objects that follows these stages:putting forward assumption-selecting variables-designing research-empirical results and interpretation. The results showed that different types of business have different interests and demands. Therefore, we cannot use a set of performance evaluation system for all kinds of enterprises, and neither can we establish different evaluation system for each enterprise. We should classify enterprises into different types, the same type of enterprise can be regarded as the same evaluating object. Taking into account the representativeness of the study, in subsequent research, the mineral resource-based enterprises are selected as an example for us to carry on enterprise performance evaluation research from the perspective of stakeholders.(6) As businesses need to consider a number of stakeholders, if the stakeholder-based performance evaluation index system is designed from result and process aspects, then the index system will be very large and not easy to catch key stakeholders, moreover the data is also difficult to obtain. Therefore, the index system is designed only from result aspect, and the effective indexes are screened based on primary indexes. Finally, the author establishes 18 kinds of indicators and a detailed description of each indicator from the aspects of shareholders, financial institutions, suppliers, customers, employees, government, the community and the public.(7) Stakeholder theory holds that stakeholders is the investor of special-purpose assets, only then they have the complete property right to its special-purpose property, can they sign a treaty mutually to compose an enterprise. The control that stakeholders group implement to enterprises is in accordance with quantity size and related risk level of special-purpose assets. Therefore, this dissertation argues that if the index weights are determined in accordance with principles that all stakeholders are equally important and similar indexes are equally important, it is oversimplified and doesn't conform to the actual situation of the enterprises. In this paper, in order to overcome the shortcomings of the methods to subjectively or objectively determine the weight of indexes, the AHP method combining with the variation coefficient method was adopted.(8) Over the past 20 years, theoretical research and practical activities on multi-index synthetic evaluation method have great developments, and evaluation methods are also increasingly complicated, mathematical and emerging. The above analysis shows that each synthesis model has its own advantages as well as limitations. For the convenience of comprehension and application, this dissertation adopts comprehensive enterprise performance evaluation model which is established through index assimilation, dimensionless processing and the combination of improved efficacy coefficient method and comprehensive index method.(9) Based on the enterprise performance evaluation system we established from the perspective of stakeholders, we chose 105 mineral resource-based enterprises and evaluated their performance, then analyzed influence factors of performance. Results show that:first, looking from the performance points, none of 105 firms obtained more than 70 scores, this result indicates that mineral resource-based enterprises need to strengthen their performance under the perspective of stakeholders. Second, looking from the rankings, if the enterprise focuses on one or two stakeholders and ignore other stakeholders, the ranking will be affected. Third, looking from the influencing factor, the time difference, mineral resource usage difference, the ultimate controlling person difference, regional difference, scale difference and so on have certain impacts on business performance. Business enterprises need to focus on these differences in the process of continuous operation and completes the counter measures so that the interests of stakeholders are satisfied and get long-term stability improvement.In this dissertation, the author establishes an enterprise performance evaluation system from the perspective of stakeholders by using both normative and empirical methods. Normative research lays foundation for proposing problems, recognizing problems and understanding problems, moreover detailed normative research provides basis for analyzing problems and solving problems. Specifically, in order to accurately grasp the overall research progress in stakeholder-based enterprise performance evaluation, the author accesses to a large number of domestic and foreign literatures. Previous research results provide a lot of guidance and help for this dissertation and also help the author find research breakthrough point. Additionally, the theory and evaluating subject problem of stakeholder-based performance evaluation are probed emphasized by using normative research method and provide basis for next few chapters. Furthermore, normative research has always been the foundation of each empirical research contents part in later chapters. As an effective performance evaluation system must be true and accurate reflection of the reality of companies and can pass the test of practice, then based on normative research, it spends more time and energy on empirical research work. In the empirical study, data acquisition methods in this paper include investigation, interview, questionnaire survey and historical data of listed companies. Data processing methods used in this dissertation include descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, parameter test and non-parameter test, correlation analysis and regression analysis, etc. The use of these methods played a very good supporting role on conclusions of this paper.The main possible innovations of the thesis concentrate on the following three aspects:(1) Evaluating subjects are divided into "source subjects" and "executive subjects". Theoretically, any stakeholder who invests special-purpose asset in the enterprise has requirement on enterprise performance and should become enterprise's performance evaluating subjects. The author called them "source subjects". It is impossible and unrealistic to let each "source subjects" set up an enterprise performance evaluation system. Therefore, from an objective, fair and accurate perspective, we believe that intermediary agency is more appropriate to act as an "executive subjects".(2) Performance evaluating objects are determined according to the classification of enterprise. There are two distinct approaches to determine performance evaluating objects:the one approach is that all the enterprises are treated as only one evaluating object, the other approach is that one enterprise was chose as an evaluating object by using case study method. This dissertation argues that both views are neither conducive to comparison and analysis of business performance, nor conducive to the stakeholders'decision-makings. Therefore, the author adopts empirical research method and takes use of questionnaire and historical data in listed companies, then she finds that stakeholders of different types of enterprises have different interests and demands. Hence, on the basis of the analysis of stakeholders'requirements, we should carry on the enterprise's classification in accordance with enterprise's characteristic. The same types of enterprises should set up the same performance evaluation system, and performance evaluation system of different types of enterprises should also be different.(3) The AHP method combining with the variation coefficient method was adopted to identify index weights. The current index weight determining methods are, because both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, so that some literatures there are all indicators regarded the role of all indexes the same. The author thinks that this treatment is too simple, it neither conform to the stakeholder theory nor conform to the actual situation of the enterprise. Therefore, the author combines qualitative and quantitative method together to identify index weights. First, the author takes use of enterprise's empirical data and variation coefficient method is adopted to identify evaluating indexes and the weights of 7 dimensions. Next, evaluating indexes are chosen and the weights of 7 dimensions are determined through expert scoring and using of AHP method. Finally, the weights determined by variation coefficient method and AHP method are combined according to the proportion of 0.6:0.4, and ultimately determine the weights of 7dimensions and 18 evaluation indexes. This process helps establish a more objective and impartiality indexes system.