Abstract: This study gives guiding principles for constructing strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system, including strategic orientation, systematicness, reliability, efficiency, operability and dynamism; it also designs a dynamic circulation process which takes achieving college strategic management objective system as the center and contains four key links: Making plans for college teacher performance evaluation, performance tutorship and implementation, performance evaluation and feedback and utilization of results of performance evaluation; besides, this study provides a model of strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system based on six key decisions: Evaluation subject, methods, indicators, standards, period and feedback and utilization of results.
INTRODUCTION
Strategic-oriented performance management is good for organic combination of strategic objectives and performance behaviors of employees and has become one of the hot issues focused by many performance managers and researchers. Some experts and scholars have made some researches on it. For example, Gang (2007) pointed out that constructing principles of strategic-oriented performance evaluation system include strategic orientation, systematicness, etc. and Yarong (2008) pointed out constructing principles of strategic-oriented college teacher performance evaluation system include accuracy, differentiation, etc. Yarong (2008) and Hua (2008) said constructing principles of strategic-oriented college teacher performance evaluation system include systematicness, stability, etc. Hua (2008) and Xue (2006) indicated that establishment of teacher performance evaluation system that fits college development strategy should start from how to set down indicators for the performance evaluation by using key performance indicators method Xue (2006) and Zhen-Bang (2010) pointed out that the model of strategic performance management system should be composed by three purposes, four sectors and five key decisions and so on. At present, study of experts and scholars on strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system are still fragmented and no one has made any comprehensive research on college teacher performance management system.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR CONSTRUCTING STRATEGIC-ORIENTED COLLEGE TEACHER PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Constructing scientific and effective college teacher performance management system must follow principles including strategic orientation, systematicness, reliability, efficiency, operability and dynamism as follows.
Strategic orientatio: Strategic orientation means that college teacher performance management system should start from the strategic objectives of the college, use means of communication and decompose the system of college strategic objectives from top to bottom and put them onto each teacher and eventually form a teacher performance evaluation indicator system based on strategic objectives which promotes mutual association and supports.
Systematicness: Systematicness means that in aspects of confirming the evaluation contents, selecting evaluation means, designing evaluation indicators and process system and so on, constructing college teacher performance management system needs to utilize the thoughts of systematic management, to let the strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system evaluate performance level and characteristics of college teachers comprehensively.
Efficiency: Efficiency means that the costs for constructing and implementing strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system should be in the budget scope of college performance management and compared with benefits of performance management, total amount of costs should be efficient and proper.
Operability: Operability means that operation procedures and methods of college teacher performance management system should be simple, distinct and easy to operate which is the basic requirement for a scientific and effective strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system.
Dynamism: Dynamism means that the college teacher performance management system should make corresponding changes according to development and changes of society and economy, advancement of science and technologies, adjustment of strategic objectives of colleges and so on.
Strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system: Strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system is composed by a center, four sectors and six key decisions as shown in Fig. 1. In detail, strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system takes achieving strategic management objective system of the college as the center and is a dynamic circulation process formed by four sectors-making plans of college teacher performance evaluation, tutorship and implementation of college teacher performance, evaluation of college teacher performance and feedback and utilization of results of college teacher performance, six key decisions including evaluation subject, evaluation method, evaluation index, evaluation standard, evaluation period and evaluation result feedback and utilization go through the above four sectors and are decisive for implementation of strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system.
One center: One center means that achieving college strategic management objective system is taken as the center. The core work of strategic-oriented college teacher performance management is making sure that college strategic management objective system is achieved. Therefore, all the work of college teacher performance management should be carried out around this center; in case that this center were deviated, college teacher performance management would lose its necessity and value.
Four sectors: A complete and effective college teacher performance management system should be a dynamic circulation process composed by four sectors-making plans of college teacher performance evaluation, tutorship and implementation of college teacher performance, evaluation of college teacher performance and feedback and utilization of results of college teacher performance, as shown in Fig. 2.
MAKING PLANS OF COLLEGE TEACHER PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
Making plans of college teacher performance evaluation is a process during which college performance managers and teachers reach consensuses and form contracts about performance objectives that should be completed by teachers during a period.
| Fig. 1: | Model of strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system |
| Fig. 2: | Dynamic circulation of four sectors of college teacher performance management |
During this stage, it should be made clear what teachers should do, to what extent, when to do, how to do, respective rights and duties, etc.
Tutorship and implementation of college teacher performance: Due to complicated conditions, dynamic environment and limited knowledge of people in implementation of college teacher performance, plans made before the period of evaluating college teacher performance can not accurately predict the possible future changes, so during the process of performance implementation, managers should monitor and guide performances of teachers in time and make respective adjustment to the plans according to changes of environment and so on.
College teacher performance evaluation: College teacher performance evaluation is an objective description of actual performances of teachers under certain conditions. Its purpose is to provide scientific evidences for decisions of human resources management of teachers, regulate and strengthen nice performance behaviors of teachers, establish effective competitive mechanism and promote constant self-reflection and improvement of teachers. At this stage, performance communication and training for evaluation subjects should be done well.
Feedback and utilization of results of college teacher performance: Results of college teacher performance evaluation should be told to the evaluated teachers constantly and performance feedback is an important sector in the process of performance management. Through, communications between evaluation subjects and evaluated teachers, achievements are affirmed and meanwhile, problems are found and corrected. Results of the evaluation can be used in aspects including adjustment of salaries of college teachers, distribution of bonus, adjustment of posts, training, reeducation, etc.
Sixkey dfcisions: In order to achieve the central objective, in four sectors of strategic-oriented college teacher performance management, colleges must focus on six key decisions-evaluation indicators, evaluation standards, evaluation subjects, evaluation methods, evaluation period and utilization of results.
Evaluation subjects: Evaluation subjects refer to people who attend college teacher performance evaluations. The subjects mainly include director superior leaders, supervisors, teachers themselves, colleagues of teachers and students. In selecting the evaluation subjects, characteristics of development stages of the evaluation objects and contents of evaluation indicators should be considered mainly and selected evaluation subjects should match the contents of evaluation indicators and characteristics of development stages of evaluated teachers.
Evaluation methods: Evaluation methods refer to the performance evaluation methods used by subjects of college teacher performance evaluation. When the evaluation subjects select methods of evaluation, they should mainly consider evaluation indicators, characteristics of evaluated teachers, evaluation costs and other factors.
Evaluation indicators: Evaluation indicators refer to detailed evaluation contents. College teachers are doing highly complicated and strongly creative work, so the design of evaluation indicators is a complex systematic process and influences of various factors should be considered. In designing the indicators, several principles should be followed, including specific, measurable, correlation, timeliness and accessibility.
Evaluation standards: Evaluation standards refer to evaluation levels of indicators for college teachers. Evaluation standards of strategic-oriented college teacher performance should not be too many or too few, 3 to 7 is fine.
Evaluation period: Evaluation period refers to the length of interval between evaluations of performance of college teachers. Setting of evaluation period should pay attention to characteristics of college teachers of different developmental stages. For example, evaluation period for expert teachers can be 3 to 5 years, period for novice teachers can be one semester or one academic year and period for problem teachers can be one semester and sometimes even one month.
Utilization of results: Utilization of results means corresponding measures of human resources management are adopted based on results of evaluations of performances of teachers. And results of the evaluations are used for on-the-job training, guidance of career life, bonus distribution, performance improvement, adjustment of posts and salaries, to improve performances of teachers and the college constantly.
CONCLUSION
Strategic-oriented college teacher performance management system is composed by one center, four sectors and six key decisions. The most important study is achieving college strategic management objective ystem and all the work of college teacher performance management must be carried out by centering on it. What needs to be pointed out is that as the researches on trategic-oriented college teacher performance management are still in the initial stage, the model is to be improved in future theoretical researches and practices.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Project funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation: The performance evaluation of Phase Achievements of Research on Differentiated College and University Teachers (20110491772). Present study is Educational and Teaching Research Project of Jiangxi Province: Phase Achievements of Research on Differentiated College and University Teachers’ Teaching Quality Evaluation System.