Performance Appraisal System (PAS) Analysis On Chinese Newspaper Group

It is generally agreed in the field that Newspaper Group possesses three attributes of politics, public welfare and industry. However, for a long time, the performance evaluation of the Newspaper Group in China failed to combine and analyze these three attributes, but just copy the performance appraisal strategies of enterprises or government. With the deeper and wider development of reform, the reconstruction of performance appraisal system in the Newspaper Group has been put on the agenda. In light of the special organizational feature of Newspaper Group, different from private organization (enterprise) and public organization, PAS for the media organization with this feature has become a brand-new subject.The paper strongly elucidates that the appropriate performance appraisal system can elevate the executive power of the Newspaper Group and further speed up the strategic enforcement and group reform. Moreover, as a good early warning system, it can effectively promote the communication and improvement between groups. In addition, it can help the group to form a value concept with openness, fairness and equity, composing the transparent cultural atmosphere. The paper analyses the status quo of performance appraisal system in the Newspaper Group, focuses on its shortcomings and limitations and finds a number of problems, such as imperfect set of performance appraisal index system, short of systematicity in the appraisal mode, extremalization of evaluators'attitudes. In order to address these above-mentioned problems, the paper, based on the individual distinctiveness and concreteness of position selection, conducts a survey on the mode, index, evaluation criteria and frequency of performance appraisal with reference to performance management approach. Adopting the principle of combination of qualitative indicators and quantitative indicators and inductive analysis, it further revises the corresponding performance appraisal system implementing in the three main departments of Newspaper Group, i.e. the purchasing and cataloguing department, operating department and managing department. The author-proposed performance appraisal system of Newspaper Group tailors for the three attributes of group-specific and double nature rather than imitates the performance appraisal system of enterprises or government. This appraisal system changes the"one size fit all"approach and will be refined with emphasis on different department concerning the selection of index. There is a breakthrough in the revised design, i.e. an exclusive appraisal group which is independent of the purchasing and cataloguing department conducts daily evaluation on the content and arrangement of manuscripts and an information feedback and appealing mechanism after the performance appraisal.