A Study On Adaptive Performance Of The R & D Personnel For The High-tech Enterprises

With the coming of the knowledge economy era, high-tech enterprises have been playing an increasingly important role in the economic development and the technological innovation, and the competition among enterprises shows a perfervid tendency. In the final analysis, the competitiveness of enterprises is the competition of talent. R&D personnel, as the source of business innovation and the key of development, are the most valuable human resources of the high-tech enterprises.However, the dynamic of high-tech enterprises and the variability of environment require their staff, especially the R&D personnel, not only to focus on their jobs, but also to have a stronger adaptability, which is the only way to ensure that R&D personnel complete the job task and bring more profit for the enterprise in a dynamic environment. Therefore, how to evaluate the performance of R&D personnel scientifically, especially the adaptive performance, is not only the key of an enterprise to achieve sustainable development, but also the basic problem of this paper.From the research of adaptive performance home and abroad, scholars have mainly focused on the definition and the structure of adaptive performance in the general staff. The insufficiency of the present literature lies in:(1) there is a lack in the standard of the adaptive performance structure, and there is less concern on adaptive performance of certain staff. For example, the most representative study in abroad is the eight-dimensional structure proposed by Pulakos, which is a basic study on adaptive performance for the general staff; in China, an influential model is a four-dimensional structure proposed by Tao Qi, but it is a study focused on enterprises training, which is the macro level. (2) The research on the performance structure of R&D personnel is mainly on two dimensions, task performance and contextual performance. While the research on adaptive performance, especially on the characteristics of R&D personnel, is relatively scarce. Therefore, what this paper is trying to contribute to is the building and verifying of adaptive performance model of R&D personnel. After defining the concept of adaptive performance, the detailed overview of literatures on adaptive performance and R&D personnel is outlined. Then, Combined with the characteristics of R&D personnel, the conceptual model of adaptive performance of R&D personnel in high-tech enterprises is presented with the connotative explanation of each dimension. Based on this, the evaluation questionnaire of adaptive performance including 21 questions is designed and research hypotheses is put forward. The built model and research hypotheses are verified by exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis based on 195 valid questionnaires. Finally, strategies and suggestions to improve the adaptive performance of R&D personnel are proposed from four dimensions. The paper not only tries to perfect and develop the theory of the adaptive performance, but also provide the scientific evidence to evaluate the adaptive performance of R&D personnel in high-tech enterprises.The main creative ideas of the thesis are as follows:(1) Based on the eight-dimensional structure of Pulakos and four-dimensional structure of Tao Qi, and taking the characteristics of R&D personnel in high-tech enterprises into account, this thesis constructs an adaptive performance model which integrates four dimensions:learning & innovation, pressure handling, coordination & integration, and emergency responsing & contingency for R&D personnel.(2) This performance model is verified by structural equation modeling using SPSS and LIEREL. Through confirmatory factor analysis, it shows that:the model has good convergent validity and discriminant validity, and can fit the survey data well; Through path analysis, the proposed five hypotheses were verified. More specifically, three hypotheses of them are supported by survey data:learning & innovation has a significantly positive effect on both pressure handling and emergency responsing & contingency; Coordination & integration has a significantly positive effect on pressure handling. While another two hypotheses, learning & innovation has a significantly positive effect on coordination & integration as well as the hypothesis that coordination & integration has a significantly positive effect on emergency responsing & contingency, are not supported by the data.(3)Through calculation and analysis of adaptive performance scores of R & D employees, this thesis proposes countermeasures both at level of enterprise and individual in four aspects: learning and innovation, pressure handling, coordination and integration, and emergency and contingency to enhance their adaptive performance.