Empirical Study On Incentive Principle And Methods Of Faculty Members In Chinese Universities

Economic globalization and the rapid development of society have brought new opportunities for Chinese higher education. Currently, the total number of Chinese college students is more than 23 million, the gross enrollment proportion of higher education reached 21%. This means that China has turned the "elite education" into the "public education". Taking public education as a guide and the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and technology as a symbol, Chinese higher education has come from the margins into the center of society. Based on the idea of reforming for development and managing for efficiency, Chinese Universities, as the center of the knowledge society and the source, have launched a reformation of a new school management system. The innovation measures such as further standarding internal management, strengthening the sense of status have improved the quality and efficiency of higher education.Meanwhile, treatment of the faculty members has been improved generally by using a variety of inspiriting methods, especially implementation of post allowance system. It should be recognized that the implementation of these personnel distribution system and reformation measures have achieved some success, which changed a traditional management mode, ideas and even system, and initially inspired the enthusiasm of university faculty, stabled the team and avoid a brain drain. However, it is undeniable that because of defects of motivation and incentive principle and method, effect of the current incentive system is declining, or can not be sustained to play an effective role in encouraging, so Chinese universities administration is facing a new crisis.We chose faculty of some Chinese universities as studying objects to examine the incentive issue of university teachers, which is of great theoretical and practical significance for the development of managing model for manpower resource about inspiring college faculty's latent creativity and mobilizing their enthusiasm. We found out the all-sided requirement of Chinese college faculty by investigating and analyzing their demand, their moving fact from one place to another, and its reasons based on the theoretical summarization about the current situation of incentive research on national and international college faculty. We summed up the current levels of demand-led and demand characteristics of the university teacher by descriptive statistical analysis. We studied the principles and methods of satisfying college faculty's demand and discussed the main factors which affected this demand in detail by analyzing the efficiency of current incentive measures and operational situation. We revealed the general principles of the incentive system for college faculty and explored intrinsic relationship among this incentive system and faculty's moving, professional development and job's stabilization on the basis of empirical analysis. We constructed the construction incentive model, determined the qualitative relativity between this model and the research results, and found the coherence between them. On the basis of all these research and analysis, we explored specific ways for effective and sustained incentive methods for college faculty, and proposed integrated incentive path of Chinese college faculty.Starting with the analysis of requirements of college faculty members, this study took the "requirement" as a window for perspective of the modern theory of incentives and the key issue of analysis. We examined current job-choosing behaviors and incentive actuality of college faculty according to empirical analysis. We integrated faculty's professional development, economic requirement, and environmental factor into incentive research, comprehensively revealed the incentive principles of college faculty. The research showed that professional development and it's achievement motivation played a leading role in self-incentive of the college faculty members; economic factors are important stimulus, and its improvement could bring better incentive result; environmental factor was an inducing factor, the effectiveness of professional development and economic factors may be greatly favored or unfavored by atmosphere and environmental management system. Thus we found that Chinese college faculty's working motivation is ordinally from the professional development, economic agent and environmental factor; the exertion of working enthusiasm of faculty members in self-assessing is between general and better; faculty wastage rate is usually low, the faculty team is in stable or super-stable state. The study also showed that satisfying the requirment and improving the factors which effects the incentive efficiency contribute to the college faculty's inspiration constantly and continually.We chose 40 universities in whole country for empirical and quantitative analysis. obtained a result distinguishing with that of previous researches, and it can provide better decision-making information to managers.This paper includes eight chapters as follows.Chapter 1: Introduction. Research issues were proposed, the aim and meaning of college faculty's incentive study was explained. The content, method, and the thread of ideas of this thesis were determined. Chapter 2: Review of literatures and analysis of current research. The incentive theories were reviewed, the national and international literatures about spiriting of college faculty were summarized. Finally the inspiration brought by relevant studies for this research were discussed.Chapter 3: Research design. Design of inquisitional questionnaire, choice of samples, distribution and reclamation of questionnaires were introduced, reliability and validity of questionnaire were revealed in this chapter. Requiring level of college faculty members and characteristics of leading requirement were summed up according to data analysis. The dependence relationship between dependent variables and independent variables were determined according to regression analysis after variable selection.Chapter 4: Empirical analysis on professional incentive. This chapter analyzed reasons of will mobility of in-service faculty members and real mobility of off faculty members, proved that professional development is the most important value orientation of college faculty members. According to satisfaction degree of vocation, perception about vocational satisfaction was thought to be in a high level, a closer relationship between inherent effectiveness of vocational and faculty's incentive. The research showed that vocational pressure, competition pressure, a sense of crisis all were factors affecting professional development of teacher, in which competitive pressure had a most significant impact on professional development of the faculty. Occupational competition caused by promotion, self-realization and performance evaluation could drive professional development of the college faculty, while competitive pressures and faculty perceived challenge to the work enable to improve development of faculty's career.Chapter 5: Empirical analysis on economic drive. We investigated income level of faculty from sample universities firstly in this chapter. It is already known that there is a difference in income level of faculty members from different regions, and this is caused by regional economic, e. g. local allowance. Our research result showed that there is a big gap between real and expectation income of the college faculty, and their salary was less than those with other jobs and with similar working ability. Compared with the staff working in the same university, faculty's salary is not reasonable higher enough, that means there is a lack of equity in the internal distribution of Chinese universities. From the view of individual contributions, correlation of faculty's devotion and earning is weak, labor return is at the low level, personal perception is not fair. Empirical results showed that income satisfaction of college faculty is generally at a low level, that is to say, the faculty's income level affect income satisfaction, and fair of external cognition has a more significant influence on their income satisfaction. We also found that not only the absolute salary, but also the relative reward affected the faculty's enthusiasm and constrained incentive effect.Chapter 6: Empirical analysis on environmental drive. Firstly, the effect of external environment on teacher incentive was analyzed briefly. Policy-oriented and market-oriented of national level determine the rise and fall of higher education and social status of college faculty. Regional factors lead to faculty's moving to dominant regional, which reveals that it is the result of rational choice to meet the needs from the will mobility to the actual mobility.Drive of universities internal environment to teachers is the most direct and effective. Our study showed that evaluation of college faculty on the inner environment is between 'general' and 'better', closer to the 'general'. Cognition of faculty about effect of evaluation and appointment of profession, check of job performance on incentive is over general level. Cognition to competitive fair is under the general level. Moreover, the system itself and fair competition perceived by faculty positively effect their working enthusiasm and professional development.Chapter 7: Construction and empirical validation of incentive model. In this chapter, we set up incentive model, and determine quantitative relationship between incentive object and incentive factors. At last, taking value system of faculty in a university of Nanjing as an example, we proved that the empirical research results is in accord with the theoretical modelChapter 8: Research results and political suggestion. Based on above analysis, we obtained three conclusions in this chapter. Faculty requirement is diversity and tendentious, in which spiritual one is at a dominant position, material needs are still the main one. Meeting the requirement is the key factor for incentive; enthusiasm of faculty is from the professional development, income factor, and environmental one in turn. Wastage rate of faculty is lower and the team is at a super-stable status. It is continuously guarantee faculty incentive to improve constraint and meet requirement. According to the results we gave suggestion about institutional innovation and self-positioning of professional development, design of incentive compensation and bonus system in university.