A Study On The Structure Of Faculty Remuneration

Faculty are the practitioners of academic profession. At state level, they are the mainstream of human resource development and scientific development, taking the responsibility of reinvigorating China through science and education, and strengthening the nation through human resource development; at university level, they are the pillars of a university, determining the academic prestige, honor, and core competence of a university. With the reform of income distribution mechanisms in national public institutions, it has become a common concern of constructing a rational and scientific faculty remuneration system, and taking advantage of the system in attracting, retaining, and encouraging talents by government, universities and academics. The structure is at the core of remuneration system, determining the distribution rationale, components, and functional orientation of remuneration. Whereas according to the existing theory and practice, the study on remuneration structure is relatively insufficient, resulting in some difficulties including the ambiguity in target pattern in universities’reform of remuneration distribution, the complexity of remuneration system, and the weakening of the encouragement of remuneration. Therefore, the paper conducted an in-depth research on the structure of faculty remuneration, following the path of theoretical exploration, rethinking on the status quo, seeking solutions of the problem, and model construction. The paper was started with the problems in the reality of the structure of faculty remuneration in China, analyzing relative theories of remuneration structure and the history and current status of Chinese faculty remuneration structure, and exploring the characteristic of academic groups, academic profession, and academics’needs together with their relation to the designing of remuneration structure by referring to the faculty remuneration structure in other countries. Moreover, the paper put forward a four-dimensional structural model of faculty remuneration, ending up with the application mechanism and safeguard mechanism in terms of the classification of university organization, the categorizing of talents, and system support. The method used in the paper were questionnaire survey, comparative study, and literature research. The faculty remuneration distribution in China changed from "person-based pay","position-based pay" to "performance-based pay". In the history of planned economy characterized by "politics in demand" and unified administration by state imperative, the mode of "person-based pay" catered to the political demand; the reform of "position-based pay" based on post appointment system in the1990s satisfied the demand of post management in university; recently the performance-based remuneration by stressing research publications, making emphasis on the target need of utilitarianism in university. This kind of top-down remuneration reform is short of the consideration of the features of academic profession and their job characteristics. Many issues shall not be neglected in the configuration of the structure of faculty remuneration in China, including the complexity of remuneration items, the insufficiency of remuneration safeguard, the simple rationale of remuneration distribution, the shortness of performance evaluation, and the missing of market awareness in remuneration distribution. These issues indicate the necessity of optimizing the structure of faculty remuneration, and offer the approach of reforming the remuneration distribution model.Five key issues should be taken into account in the designing of faculty remuneration with the characteristics of academic group, academic profession, and academics’needs, namely, the compensation of human capital, the multi-task agent remuneration contract, performance evaluation appropriate to the labor’s characteristic, the uniformity of remuneration distribution and universities’ development strategies, the uniformity of remuneration distribution and faculty’s real needs.The paper was based on the peculiarity of faculty remuneration distribution, starting with the morphological characteristics of faculty’s laboring and enlightened by the experience of faculty remuneration distribution in foreign universities. It raised a four-dimensional (3P1M) structural model upon individual human capital, post, performance, and market, together with a distributive function of this model.In the model, the dimension of human capital is a remuneration element based on "human", acting as the compensation of the faculty’s human capital input and embodying their value; the dimension of post is a remuneration element based on "work", serving to simplify faculty’s laboring process upon the value of their posts, as well as the difficulty in measuring their laboring input, and it can also keep faculty’s behavior consistent with universities’development strategies; the dimension of performance is a remuneration element based on "value creation", which aims at "rewarding the good and punishing the bad, rewarding the diligent and punishing the indolent" in fulfilling the organization’s value goal; the dimension of market is a remuneration element based on "the supply and demand relation", with the effect of reflecting the supply and demand relation of external academic labor market, compensating the potential losses brought from external changes of economic environment. In the four-dimensional model, the paper creatively raised the post remuneration distribution mode based on "work", and the performance remuneration distribution mode based on post tasks, working out the alternative issue of teaching and research tasks, and the issue of hourly wages and piece wage simply based on quantification in performance evaluation.There are two premises in applying the model of faculty remuneration structure into practice, one is the configuration strategy of the remuneration structure, the other is relative systems, resource supply and support.In terms of configuration strategy, different types of organization have different target locations, behavior characteristics, and human capital characteristics. Inside the organization, different staff have different specialties and capacity value. Therefore, the remuneration structure shall adjust measures to local conditions and talents according to the organization’s features and type of talents, leading to an effective remuneration structure system. In terms of the supporting conditions, to enabling the autonomy of remuneration distribution in university is the precondition of reforming remuneration structure strategies, and the foundation of supporting the remuneration structure itself lies in establishing a reasonable remuneration pricing of human capital, implementing post classified management, and completing the faculty performance evaluation.