Performance and compensation management-Annotated bibliography Essay

Performance and compensation management-Annotated bibliography - Essay Example Although appraisals are usually performed at the level of an individual employee, there is still scope â€Å"for employee voice/participation, both individually and collectively, and for varying degrees of management – union cooperation†. The New South Wales public education system case study leads to surprising findings. Despite the collective clout of the two thousand strong public school teacher union – the NSW Department of Education and Training – their history shows minimal confrontation with management. The study suggests that there is an acceptance of the merits of individualism over collectivism – a fact attested by the union’s acceptance of an individualized performance appraisal system that has been in place in the last decade. But this pragmatic concession on part of union has not diminished its power and potential for collective action in other areas. This article takes up an often neglected area of HRM research, namely that of a public school system. While government run institutions are usually seen as less merit-based, the successful implementation of an individualized performance appraisal programs in NSW questions this assumption. It proves how meritocracy can co-exist alongside political quotas for recruiting personnel (as in affirmative action programs in the United States). Fang Lee Cooke & Kun Huang, Post-acquisition Evolution of the Appraisal and Reward Systems: A Study of Chinese IT Firms Acquired by US Firms, Human Resources Management, November-December 2011, Vol.50, No.6, p.839-858 The article studies how performance appraisal and reward systems change for an IT firm after they have been acquired. In the case of the four Chinese IT firms being acquired by the larger US firms, the influencing factors were found to be â€Å"business strategy, organizational structure, resource-based power of the acquiring and acquired partners, management competence, labor market factors and the cultural norms of China†. The researchers find definite though not drastic changes to the performance appraisal programs before and after acquisition. One of the major obstacles to streamlining change is the reluctance of Chinese managerial staff to accept these changes. The acquirers have allowed more time for their Chinese managers to adapt to the new realities. As a result there is a divide in terms of HRM