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Introduction介绍
绩效管理是企业员工的绩效评价，是针对每个员工的岗位职责，已成为企业战略方针和人力资源活动的重要组成部分。绩效管理的内涵比绩效考核、绩效考核等人力资源管理战略更为广泛，被称为绩效管理（Fletcher，2001）。绩效管理运用各种科学的定性和定量方法，对员工行为的实际效果及其对企业的贡献和评价进行评估和评价。它是企业个人管理的重要内容，也是企业管理的有力手段。绩效管理的目的是通过评价提高每个人的效率，最终达到企业的目标。
然而，在2009年苏格兰工会大会（STUC）年会上，有人建议绩效管理经常被错误地使用。它迫使工人提高产量，降低工资，为表现不佳的工人制定配额，并管理这些工人失业。在他们的版本中，绩效管理已经成为一种特别残忍的方法，迫使员工对企业强加的标准做出反应。正如Taylor（2013）在报告中所言，绩效管理现在是一种“新的工作场所专制”。泰勒的声明和其他类似的观点引发了争议。本文将对绩效管理进行批判性的探讨，并提出自己的看法。
Performance management refers to performance evaluation of employees in enterprises, which is aiming at job responsibilities of every employee and has become a strategic approach and an important part of business policies and HR activities. The connotation of performance management is wider than performance appraisal, performance appraisal and other human resource management strategies are known as performance management (Fletcher, 2001). Using all kinds of scientific qualitative and quantitative methods, performance management assesses and evaluates the practical effect of behaviors of employees and their contributions and valuations to the enterprises. It is an important content of personal management of enterprises, it is also a powerful method of enterprises’ management. The aim of performance management is to improve the efficiency of each individual through evaluation, eventually achieving the goal of enterprises.
However, in 2009 in the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) Annual Conference, it was suggested that performance management often being used in a incorrect way. It forces workers to produce more, drives down salaries and creates quotas for workers who did not perform well, and manages these workers out of their jobs. In their version, performance management has already become a particularly brutal method, which compels workers to react to standards imposed by enterprises. Just as Taylor (2013) suggested in his report, performance management was now a “new workplace tyranny”. Taylor’s statement and other similar opinions triggered controversies. In this essay, it is going to discuss the performance management critically and puts forward our own opinions.
1. Performance management is not a “new workplace tyranny”绩效管理不是“新工作场所的专制”
2006年，一篇题为“绩效管理”的作品摧毁了索尼？！索尼公司前执行董事写的这篇文章让商业界大吃一惊。这一观点的支持者太多了，而抗议者也对绩效管理持怀疑态度（Biron等，2011年）。索尼前执行董事认为，索尼的垮台是由于引入了员工绩效管理。许多学者持有这种观点。泰勒教授在2013年进行了一项实证研究，然后为苏格兰工会大会发表了一份报告。在本报告中，泰勒通过大量来自一线的证据，探讨了绩效管理对员工的负面影响。Hartog等（2004）在他们的实证研究中也提出，在许多领域，企业承认，通过实施绩效管理体系来提高产出是一项艰巨而复杂的任务。John Godard（2004）进行了一项研究，以评估高绩效系统对雇主、员工和组织成果的影响。研究结果表明，不同于长期以来所相信的，优越的性能结果可能是不必要的。即使绩效管理的有效性也引起了争议，本文仍然认为绩效管理不是一种新的工作场所专制。具体意见如下。
In 2006, a piece of work titled Performance management destroyed Sony? ! that wrote by a former executive director of Sony Corporation had astonished the commercial world. There were so many supporters of this opinion, while the protesters were also doubt about performance management (Biron, etc., 2011). The former executive director of Sony believed that Sony's fall was due to the introduction of employee performance management. Many scholars hold this kind of view. Professor Taylor conducted an empirical study in 2013, and then published a report for the Scottish Trades Union Congress. In this report, through a lot of evidences from the front-line, Taylor discussed the negative impact of performance management on employees. Hartog etc. (2004) also suggested in their empirical research, in many areas enterprises admitted that, by implementing performance management systems to improve their output was an arduous and complicated task. John Godard (2004) made a research to assess the effects of high-performance systems on employer, employee and organization outcomes. Research results showed that, different with what has long been believed, superior performance outcomes may not be warranted. Even the effectiveness of performance management evokes disputes, in this essay, the author still believes that performance management is not a new workplace tyranny. Opinions shall be discussed in details in the following.
1.1 Performance management and employees’ passion
Sony corporation’s former executive director thought that performance management led to the disappearance of the passion of employees, particularly that of technical developers. The technical developers want to achieve the success of technology development through their own efforts, this is a kind of intrinsic motivation; in contrast, the return comes from outside, such as money, appreciation or famous is extrinsic motivation. If the external motivation is strengthened, the intrinsic motivation will be weakened. That is to say, if employees only believe hard working will increase their pay, then the inner consciousness that taking work as fun will be suppressed. Without a genuine passion, technical developer cannot be a "techno-geek".
Employees passion disappeared means there are problems of the direction of performance management (Peters & Austin, 1983). That is to say, the direction of performance management of Sony attached importance to external incentives such as salary and promotion, and did not introduce guidance into the inner world. It was not an issue of performance management itself, just Sony had not make a right performance direction for employees, particularly for the technicians. For instance, to assume a more challenging research task can be a motivation of research and development technicians.
1.2 Performance management and challenging spirit
Many researches have similar conclusions that performance management may lead to the disappearance of challenging spirit, because employees are apt to complete tasks which are easier to meet performance management requirements (Taylor, 2013; McKenna etc., 2011; Beardwell and Thompson, 2014; Carter etc., 2011; Prowse, etc., 2009). After introducing performance management, many employees put forward the low target which is easy to achieve, and the whole company focuses on pursuing of immediate interests, so that it is difficult to see the benefits of working in short term, for example the contempt of product quality inspection and working procedure about “aging treatment”. In fact, for every enterprise, some solid and meticulous work are easy to be ignored as long as the performance management being implemented. The operation department takes each other out and tries to get more profits from the enterprises’ overall interests.
Spirit of challenging disappeared means there are problems of the performance target setting. Performance targets can be divided into two kinds, one is tasks that must be completed. This kind of task is unconverted, if it cannot be made, employees must bear penalty. The other kind is challenging task. The main effect of this kind task is to encourage employees, once completion employees can get extra reward, such as extra bonuses, honor motivation, or a better learning opportunity. That is to say, for work which cannot take effect in a short term, it would better be identified by importance, rather than by short-term benefits. In addition, there are short-term and long-term differences between the targets, and how to choose the short and long term targets, it depends on the strategy and the communications between senior management and the subordinates.
1.3 Performance management and team work spirit
Sony’s former executive director also thought that performance management led to the disappearance of the spirit of team work. The performance management attempts to quantify people's ability so as to make an objective and fair evaluation. The biggest drawback of this approach is that it ruins the atmosphere in the enterprise. The boss does not treat his subordinates as emotional people, he regards the indicator as the most important thing and examines the subordinates in the "eyes of evaluation". For the employees of enterprise, the necessary warmth and trust exists no longer. The spirit of team work disappeared is talking about the problem of performance communication and evaluation (Broek etc., 2004; Legge, 1995). Performance evaluation makes senior management and their subordinates stand on the opposite; the lack of mutual trust between them is one of the pitfalls of the performance management.
From reasons listed above, it seems performance management do have some drawbacks. No wonder Taylor and other supporters suggested that performance management was a “new workplace tyranny”. However, after analyses we can find that performance management is just a method, or a tool to manage employees. Even the former executive director of Sony revealed many "bad consequences" the performance management causes, but is it the problem of performance management itself, or is it not used well? In the viewpoint of this essay, performance management is a tool, but many organizations did not use the this tool well, it is not the problem of performance management itself. Performance management may have some drawbacks along with the economic and social development, it is never a “new workplace tyranny”, just the way to use this tool is not proper. #p#分页标题#e#
2. Challenges and problems of performance management system in the new age
From the analysis above, performance management is not “a new workplace tranny” if enterprises use this tool properly. However, with the era changing, performance management encountered a lot of challenges and problems.
Firstly, the enterprise strategy becomes increasingly difficult to adapt because of the uncertain future, and the in-adaptation of performance management increases. Enterprise strategy is geared to the needs of the future; but in the changing world, the future is more uncertain, the enterprise’ long term target and strategy might be more improper and failing in the aspect of vision, foresight, strategic layout and phased goal setting, etc. (Findlay & Thompson, 2017). However, for the sake of business, it requires to keep the strategy relative stable and consistency. Performance management is a key to guarantee the realization of the enterprise strategic objectives, performance management becomes improper with the in-adaptability of the strategy, the enterprise problem comes.
Secondly, a mature performance management system always lags behind the changing commercial world. It is easy to understand, the strategy of the enterprise is relative stable, which requires performance management system also paying attention to the corresponding stability. But the commercial world is changing, that’s why the system of management is much more difficult adapting the outside commercial world. For example, for a marketing organization of a enterprise existing for 20 years, some performance management indicators, such as sales completion rate, growth rate, the receivable yield rate etc., could also be used for 20 years. Even there are some changes, it might simply be the change of proportion of the various indicators and their performance parts in the overall payment. Unfortunately, the strategic stages of the enterprise are not only different in numbers, but also differ in some key paths and key performance indicators which might affect the whole strategy. The enterprises cannot only pursue the outcome measures such as sales completion, growth and payback, they should also pay enough attention to the key variable processes that influence the results. These existing disadvantages of performance management might become more constraining to the strategic objectives, which might also affect the effectiveness of performance management itself (Iqbal, etc., 2015).
Thirdly, new technologies not only bring business revolutions, but also promote changes in enterprise organizations and performance management system. The in-depth development of platforms and technologies such as the Internet also leads to the changes of organization and management of enterprises. Electricity sector, new media marketing department are the dominant aspects of enterprises’ organizational change; following the trend of enterprises’ organization change, internal business organization can better make our enterprises adapt to the current business environment. In other words, the application of new business technology in management has made it easier to look and perform the complex performance management evaluation. The performance management that has allowed us to pursue more resultant metrics in the past has become more capable of focusing on key process indicators. However, the impact of the business changes and management changes brought about by new business technologies is underestimated, and the self-coordination and change that enterprises can make are usually lagging behind. This increases the difficulty of performance management system’s adaptation in the new business age.
Fourthly, performance management system has unprecedented personalization. Today's business world has come to a new era. The key words of this new era are: upgrading, innovation and transformation, etc. In the changing moment, many business owners don’t understand today and tomorrow, some of them are full of pessimism. This also makes performance management system of many enterprises appear abnormal and be different from the previous. In addition, enterprises differ in internal resources, capabilities, cultures, survival and development stages, each enterprise is actually "almost the same, actually quite different". The existence of new business practice, the personalized differentiation of enterprises determine that the performance management system unprecedentedly highlights personalization. The new business normal makes us less knowledgeable about the accessibility and relevance of performance management.
3. Are there any options available?
In the modern world, enterprise is a competitive subject and a utilitarian organization, if there is no performance and no profit, an enterprise cannot exist and cannot sustainable develop. The pursuit of performance is an inherent mission of the organization. Therefore, there is no need to discuss the reasonableness of performance management system, but also how to implement performance management system well.
On the one hand, Internet era brings qualitative change and uncertainty, coupled with drastic change of business environment, enterprises should review and analyze the various problems of performance management system in practice, to get out of the wrong region of the system. On the other hand, enterprises need to see the new period, new changes of the performance management and stand up to new challenges, they must make innovation to performance management system, give new meaning to performance management, achieve performance management innovation at its mode and management means.
Previously, performance management is result management, in the new age, it would be better to focus on the driving force behind the performance results, and return to the human standards. (Haines III, etc., 2012) In the past performance management system evaluates things, now it evaluates people, the level of performance management is deeper and richer. Moreover, the special process performance management gradually switches to the comprehensive performance management. Comprehensive performance management starts from candidates. For enterprises which perform comprehensive performance management system, choosing people is more important than nurturing people. It bases on organizational culture, under this system a group of like-minded people can be gathered, and then they can work together to create the target performance. It can also be said that under the theory of comprehensive performance management, the way of performance management can be closely related to the enterprises’ strategy and business development model (Newsome, etc., 2013). According to the characteristics of the industry, the stage of development and the size of the enterprise, there would have different emphases and combinations of the components of performance management. It means that the method of performance management cannot be standardized and unified, but needs to individualize and manage the integrated solution of customization.
In addition, in the Internet era, employees have a high degree of participation in enterprise management, and performance management could enable the whole staff to participate in the performance management, rather than the way of assigning indicators. The method of performance management also needs to be innovated, establishing a better corporate culture and a more cohesive enterprise environment would be helpful in improving performance management system.
4. Conclusion
In a word, employee performance management system is not a “new workplace tyranny”. It is a tool, all problems come down to this: how the enterprises can use this tool well? Currently, there are many questions and misunderstandings of performance management system. With the Internet and business environment changes, performance management needs transformation and upgrading, it needs to open a new round of development, walking toward a deeper, richer, more dynamic and efficiency employee performance management system.
Reference
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