Scorecard Applied Research, Grassroots Customs Performance Management

"Twelve Five-Year" plan is the key period to build a well-off society in an all-round way and is the crucial period to deepen the reform and opening-up, accelerate the transformation of economic development. With the further deepening of China's market-oriented economy and the speeding up of China's participation into the world economy, all the government authorities that are involved in international market competition and resource exploration are facing ever-increasing challenges. In response to the increasingly tough competition and challenges and in order to successfully complete the goals of "Twelfth Five-Year" plan, the government authorities at all levels must strengthen the innovation of management art and improve administrative efficiency.The Grass-roots Customs (GRC), basic Customs unit directly working on the frontline for Customs control and enforcement and a window for Customs to the business, grass roots and other stakeholders, its working performance, enforcement capability and service are, to great extent, reflecting the whole picture of Customs administration. Therefore, how to, through innovation and experiment, establish a series of effective philosophies, mechanisms and methods for GRC's management and governance, is not only the requirement under current circumstances, but also the demand for Customs'future development and perfection.In recent years, many of the grass-roots units have actively explored on the performance management in many ways, such as the quantitative assessment, law enforcement assessment, performance monitoring. And some achievements have been made. However, as it was carried out too late, and lack of in-depth research and systematically theoretical instruction, coupled with the inherent characteristics of the administrative authorities and the customs, there are still many shortcomings in the performance management of the customs.By systematic analysis of the shortcomings of GRC's present performance management, this paper, based on a case study on the management practice of Capital Airport Customer, tries to introduce Balanced Scorecard (BSC) theory and design a BSC model and furthermore, a Staff Scorecard model based on it, for GRCs' performance management and focusing on 4 perspectives, namely Customer perspective, internal business process perspective, learning and growth perspective, and financial perspectives. This paper also comes up with solutions to set up a strategic approach and performance management system that enables GRC to translate its vision and strategy into implementation, by focusing and defining objectives linked to specific targets and performance measures, and builds up a management model consists of 3 pillars, i.e. BSC strategic management, effective communication, and performance assessment, which provides solutions to strategic and performance management for GRCs that are always in confrontation of various contradictions and benefit conflicts.This article is consists of five parts:The first chapter is an introduction, briefly introducing the era background, the purpose and significance, the ideas and methods and the text structure; the second chapter introduces the basic theory and a number of successful applications in foreign governments'experience of the Balanced Scorecard; Chapter III analyzes the problems on the performance management and the application of Balanced Scorecard in GRC; the fourth chapter introduces the application of the Balanced Scorecard in GRCs, with a case study on the management practice of Capital Airport Customer, designing a BSC model for GRCs'performance management s; based on the previous four chapters, the fifth chapter puts forward a sound proposal to solve the problems that come from the application of the Balanced Scorecard in GRCs'performance management.As a new management tool, Balanced Scorecard is widely used in business and public sectors abroad. By contrast, China is still in the exploratory stage. Although designing BSC for GRC is a positive try to enhance performance management, but if it could be further spread out and modeled through all over the country, it would definitely improve Customs management as a whole, tackle the key problems in the process of Customs reform and development such as the confrontation between restrictive control and efficient service, imbalance of regulation and efficiency, incoherence of policy and implementation, and inconsistency of long-term strategy and short-term goals in some extent, and be of help to find a dynamic management approach based on processes of self-improvement, self-perfection and self-exploration, so as to ensure the fulfillment of Customs responsibilities as well as its own organizational visions and strategic goals.