Report on "Managing Performance at Haier"

Essay by martzinCollege, UndergraduateB, May 2006

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The management of workers and engineers at Haier may be characterized as the management of "a carrot and a whip." We may see some similarity between Haier's management of workers and Taylor's scientific management in the early days of capitalism in USA. Taylor's scientific management encountered severe opposition of laborers and labor unions and thus was not so successful. Haier's management has been well received by workers. Haier's management has also been well received by product development engineers. It is considered as one of the key success factors of Haier.

Under the old management of socialism there was practically no achievement motivation, innovative capabilities and competitive attitudes of employees from the top to the bottom. The workers and the engineers are now given opportunities to display their motivation, innovative and competitive attitudes and capabilities of such kinds under Haier's management. Haier's management is in contrast to the old management of socialism.

Importance of "face" (to save face or to lose face) and human relationship are often pointed as characteristics of Chinese cultural tradition, management seems to encourage the two characteristics.

The results of the evaluation of workers and engineers are shown with individual names. It seems that workers, engineers or managers of poor results lose their faces. This practice seems to go along with the Chinese cultural tradition.

The evaluation is determined by some rules. Their superiors and managers in the personnel department can not influence evaluation. There is no room for discretionary evaluation by them. Thus, we may say that the new management contradicts with the cultural tradition of China which emphasizes human relationship. On the other hand the "80:20 Principle" may prove this theory wrong as the managers were supposed to supervise, employ and train employees that would be able to maintain their trust. In other case they...