Research On The Impact Of Forced Distribution Rating Systems On Innovation Performance Of Employees

As the national strategy shifts from investment-driven to innovation-driven,innovation has become the key for the country to enhancing core competitiveness and promoting economic transformation and upgrading.In this context,innovation profoundly influences the survival and development of a company.As the foundation and starting point of company innovation,employees play a pivotal role in company innovation activities.Therefore,for a long time,firm managers have been tirelessly seeking ways to improve employee innovation performance.The performance evaluation system,a human resource management mechanism,helps to facilitate employees’ innovation motivation and foster their innovation performance.At present,a series of renowned domestic and foreign companies viewing innovation as the main development guidance and support have introduced forced distribution rating systems such as the rank and yank system and its variants in their human resource management practices.Nevertheless,few studies directly focus on the relationship between the implementation of forced distribution rating systems and employee innovation performance.In view of the above conditions,based on the theory of tournament theory,selfdetermination theory and person-environment fit theory,the thesis employs the difference-indifferences model to conduct empirical analysis using inventor data of Harvard dataverse network and public reports of company’s implementing forced distribution rating systems.It figures out the impact of the systems on the company’s employee innovation performance,on account of which it explores the distinguishing influence of the systems on the innovation performance of elite employees and employees fallen behind.Besides,it then analyzes the moderating effect of employee cooperation and firm size on this relationship.The thesis finds that:(1)Forced distribution rating systems have a negative impact on employee innovation performance.(2)Companies’ implementing forced distribution rating systems has a positive effect on the innovation performance of employees fallen behind and a negative impact on that of elite employees,which to a certain extent contradicts the companies’ assertion that they pursue elite culture through utilizing the systems.(3)The degree of employee cooperation and company size moderates the effect that forced distribution rating systems have on employee innovation performance.The higher the degree of employee cooperation and the larger the company scale,the greater the negative impact of forced distribution rating systems on employee innovation performance.The robustness tests further support the above conclusion.This study enriches and expands research on the relationship between forced distribution rating systems and individual innovation performance.Meanwhile it provides significant inspiration for companies to adopt similar performance evaluation systems.