Public Objectives And Individual Accountabilities

It is an important and decisive strategic task for every university to establish a scientific and rational faculty performance evaluation model and operating mechanism by which to evaluate faculty's knowledge and creative work value in an scientific and rational way and motivate faculties to perform their individual responsibilities and hence promote realization of university's Public objectives.Meanwhile,since the university enrollment expansion in 1999,many Chinese universities' positioning and development have been greatly affected and powerfully interfered to some degree by market factors.Objectively,some universities' faculty performance evaluation orientation,pattern and measures with an aim to instant success cause them to deviate from their inherent spirits and nature,leading to some phenomena such as worldly education,market-oriented teaching,utilitarian performance evaluation,and bureaucratic faculty management.Based on the time background and universities' specific situations,this dissertation attempts to make an empirical study of teaching research universities under the jurisdiction of local government using university education administration theory,objective motivation theory,and performance evaluation methodology in combination with the practical development of university faculty performance evaluation.It focuses on the following six realistic questions concerning reform and development of university's faculty performance evaluation.(1)What on earth are university's Public objectives and nature? What individual responsibilities should faculties take? What factors cause the cognitive deviation?(2)What does university's faculty performance evaluation mean? Why should Chinese universities speed up their faculty performance evaluation reform?(3)What is and what should be Chinese universities' faculty performance evaluation reform? How can we judge the relationship among university' Public objectives,faculties' individual responsibilities and faculty performance evaluation in a systematic,comprehensive and in-depth manner?(4)How should faculty performance be evaluated so as to make university's Public objectives coordinated with faculties' individual responsibilities?(5)What faculty performance evaluation model can effectively serve both university's and faculties' development objective?(6)How should the mechanism be optimized and what measures should be taken to put into effective operation the faculty performance evaluation model based on Public objectives and Individual accountabilities?To comprehensively and systematically explore the above questions,this dissertation combines theoretical analysis and simulation experiment,employs educational motivation theories and quantitative methods such as analytic hierarchy process(AHP),fuzzy evaluation and systematic dynamics,and uses literature sorting,investigation research,and simulation experiment.It takes a research paradigm as follows: background analysis ? question definition ? theoretical research ? present situation cognition?index design?model construct?simulation experiment?thinking improvement?countermeasure analysis.The basic logic is as follows.Firstly,the dissertation analyzed the “realistic state” of university faculty performance evaluation based on a study of background,environment,history and present situations.Then,it explored the “source state” of university faculty performance evaluation based on analysis of relative theories and evolution laws.Moreover,it examined the “expected state” of the effectiveness and reliability of the solution proposed through simulation experiment.Finally,based on the result of the simulation experiment and practical application,it proposed some corrective and preventive measures and optimized the solution,i.e.,explored the “ideal state” of university faculty performance evaluation.The research mainly consists of literature overview,relative theories review,present situation investigation and analysis,research on evaluation index,evaluation model construction,simulation experiment,solution improvement and optimization,countermeasure and suggestion thinking,and conclusions and expectations.Main contents are as follows.(1)The dissertation analyzed problems facing Chinese universities' faculty performance evaluation,defined the focus of the research task based on the time background and education reform situation.(2)Based on literature review and theoretical analysis,the dissertation illustrated the connotation,relationship and functioning mechanism of universities' Public objectives and faculties' individual responsibilities,identified scientific and feasible the oretical norms and research paradigms based on which a theoretical system about universities' faculty performance evaluation was formed.(3)The dissertation constructed a faculty performance evaluation model based on universities' Public objectives and faculties' individual responsibilities and made a systematic analysis of it according to its criterion,index,structure,method and implementation and feedback.(4)The dissertation empirically studied the faculty performance evaluation model proposed,simulated faculty performance evaluation activities using system dynamics,tested the validity and reliability of the model proposed,and proposed some improvement and optimization ideas based on the simulation results.Through practical investigation,the dissertation concluded the present situation and major problems of universities' faculty performance evaluation.Based on realistic demands-the “actual state” of the research on reform and development,the dissertation determined the objective basis of universities' faculty performance reform,and explored universities' complex internal and external environment revolving around the realistic objective conditions facing research on the faculty performance evaluation model.Thus,based universities' Public objectives and faculties' individual responsibilities,the dissertation designed the index system of faculty performance evaluation,and explored an innovative path by which to optimize the faculty performance evaluation model proposed.The dissertation obtained the following findings.Firstly,certain achievements have been achieved in Chinese universities' faculty performance evaluation reform,but there are still some realistic problems shown in the following four layers: lack of perfect faculty performance evaluation system,irrational evaluation indexes,insufficient concern about faculties' career development,and unscientific application of evaluation result.Specifically speaking,the evaluation concerns on short-term rather than long-term,intentionally or unintentionally overlooking the developing nature of evaluation objective;the evaluation standard concerns explicity rather than implicitly,emphasizing too much on the seemly beautiful requirement of rigid indexes while overlooking the importance and nature of flexible indexes;the evaluation process concerns process rather than efficiency,the evaluation process and operating procedure being too complex while the efficiency of evaluation being too low;the evaluation content concerns fixed rather than changing,emphasizing standard,norm,and procedure of the evaluation itself while the performance evaluation's situational,specific,dynamic and developing content is insufficient;the evaluation result concerns performance rather than development,the evaluation result being used a current basis by which to develop faculties' compensation and benefits rather than a long-term guideline for planning faculties' ability and career development.Secondly,university's faculty performance evaluation has dual missions-realizing university's Public objectives and faculties ‘Individual accountabilities,enriching the connotation of the evaluation.If the university wants to construct a scientific,just,rational and feasible faculty performance evaluation mechanism and create a development environment for faculties and build an innovative platform helpful for the creation and dissemination of knowledge,wisdom,spirits and culture,it should first think about the objective orientation of the faculty performance evaluation.As reform on higher education deepens and under the background that university's objective differentiates and diversifies and university's operation is becoming increasingly social and complex,Chinese universities are now in an increasingly complex environment,and great changes have taken place in situations,affecting factors,and condition dimensions for faculty performance evaluation.University's Public objectives is always the basis of faculties' individual responsibilities,while faculties' professional characteristics determine that they have their responsibilities and obligations to practice university's Public objectives,and this is the value and realistic significance of faculty performance evaluation.Thirdly,there is some orientation deviation in faculty performance evaluation.The phenomenon receiving widespread controversy and reflection les in the fact that great achievements have been made in faculty performance evaluation reform but there are still many remarkable negative effects such as utilitarian orientation,closed operation,and bureaucratic evaluation.The orientation deviation of faculty performance evaluation is manifested as follows.Utilitarian evaluation deviates from university's mission and goal,closed evaluation weakens external supervision and inherent motive,and bureaucratic evaluation hinders the ultimate realization of university's Public objectives.The reason lies in failure to stick to university value.Rigid and standard value orientation and popular and homogeneous public drawbacks proves the necessity for reform on faculty performance appraisal.Rethinking on university value makes the design of faculty performance evaluation pattern possible.Fourthly,index system design and model construct are core to research on faculty performance evaluation.We should concern about the dialectical relationship between university's Public objectives and faculties ‘Individual accountabilities,refer to classic education evaluation standard,stick to university's value orientation,design an overall framework,consider the interests of all stakeholders,design an index system,and make a fuzzy performance evaluation of faculties' morality level,teaching and research level,major development,and social services.Based on the system dynamics model,the dissertation will make simulation analysis of faculties' teaching and research level and social services,explore faculties' evaluation from the perspectives of group and individual using qualitative and quantitative methods,and discuss the effects of incentive measures on faculty performance.Fifthly,the faculty performance system dynamics model is an evaluation and analysis tool using qualitative and quantitative methods.The simulation experiment shows that faculty performance is affected by various factors which affect each other and cannot function independently,different incentive coefficients have different effects on faculty performance,and different evaluation orientation have different effects on short-term and long-term performance.Hence,it is of realistic significance to scientifically set and dynamically adjust evaluation elements,index system and its weight,rationally allocate resources,build an evaluation culture,and give play to the long-term guidance of appraisal.Sixthly,the optimization and improvement of faculty performance evaluation mainly lies in organizational structure,operating support,and incentive mechanism.At the organizational structure level,university should construct a faculty network organization showing university culture and oriented toward university development strategy.At the support mechanism level,university should construct higher education value idea,build a faculty-centered campus culture,and form an efficient faculty team.At the incentive mechanism level,university should formulate a scientific and rational inventive-constraint system combining material incentive and spiritual incentive so as to form an efficient faculty performance evaluation mechanism.Under the new economic normality,this dissertation concerns about how university can play a better role,effectively coordinate between its Public objectives and faculties' individual responsibilities,and establish a scientific faculty performance evaluation model.This dissertation introduced Public objectives and Individual accountabilities into faculty performance evaluation,proposed a new evaluation perspective,increased a new paradigm for evaluation,combined various research methods,in particular fuzzy evaluation and system dynamics,explored the construction evaluation model and simulation experiment,and improved the validity and validity of faculty performance evaluation,thus providing realistic guidance for faculty performance evaluation reform.