Research On The Performance Measurement Of R&D Personel Based On Market Distance

In the era of Knowledge Economy, R&D personnel and it's performance play the key role for the organization to get competitive advantage. Since performance measurement is an important way to improve the people's performance, it's of great value for us to study how to improve the R&D personnel's performance by improving the effectiveness of the measuring system.The research on the R&D personnel's performance measurement has experienced 3 stages: German Model, U.S. Model and Comprehensive Model. Among the 3, the Comprehensive Model is the most reasonable beacuse it has the idea of contingency and insisits that we should measure the R&D personnel based on the character of his performance. Thus, it is necessary for the manager to know the character of the R&D personnel's performance before measuring him.Originally, market distance is an important factor influencing the layout and position of industrial and agricultural manufacturing. Based on the former research on the hiberarchy in R&D area, the paper develops the definition of Market Distance from the view of Knowledge Economy and does the main job as followed:(1) Developing the definiton of Market Distance. The developed definiton keeps the basic meaning with the original one while at the same time it provides a theory platform for the formal relative ideas. Althrough the developed definiton is brought forward in this research for the first time, the empirical study shows that all the 21 experts we interviewed can accept the definiton and believe that it could be a tool for us to differentiate and analyse the characters of different R&D personnels.(2) Research on the R&D personnel's Market Distance qualitatively and quantitatively. Different from the original definiton, the developed definition is not single-dimensional but multidimensional. After literature research and interview, the paper develops and tests the R&D personel's Market Distance questionnaire. The result shows that the R&D personel's Market Distance can be evaluated from 4 dimensions: whether the work output is definite or not, whether the work output's utility is obvious or not, whether the work output is public or not and at last whether the work output is professional or not.(3) Research on the performance measurement of R&D personel based on Market Distance. Althrough the debate of whether there is a need to measure the R&D personnel still exists, most R&D personnels and most enterprises believe that it is necessary to measure them and the most popular way is to measure the outcome. Concerning on the measurement index, nearly half of the organizations use the financial measurement index despite that many R&D personnels especially R&D personnels of college do not think it proper. Guided by the contingency idea in the comprehensive model, the paper points out a series of hypotheses from the view of the Market Distance. The test result shows that there are no uniform performance measurement methods. Market Distance as a new tool to differentiate and analyse the characters of different R&D personnels, it can provide some clues for us to decide which method to measure and whether to use the financial index to measure. The relation is significantly positive between the degree of definitude of the R&D personnel's work output and his attitude toward the financial index. So is the relation between the degree of distinctness of the R&D personnel's work output and the attitude of financial index. But on the contrary, the relation is significantly negative between the degree of publicity of the R&D personnel's work output and his attitude toward the financial index, so is between the degree of speciality and the attitude of financial index.In the word, the idea of contingency in the Comprehensive Model of R&D personnel measurement is reasonable. There is no measurement method that can be used everywhere. In order to improve the effectiveness of the measurement system, we should choose method and index based on the character of the R&D personnel's market distance.