Contributing management factors to performance management effectiveness in information technology industry of small and medium enterprises in Wuhan, China

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate management factors that contribute to effectiveness of performance management in Information Technology Industry of Small and Medium Enterprises in Wuhan, China. The respondents of this study consist of 151 human resource managers from IT SMEs in Wuhan. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the main factors affecting the effectiveness of IT SMEs performance management, the relationships between management factors (planning, communication, information collection, appraisal, feedback and reward) and the effectiveness of performance management, and the critical factors that influence the effectiveness of performance management in IT SMEs in Wuhan. The study uses survey method whereby data was collected using questionnaire and was later analyzed by using quantitative method, such as descriptive and inferential statistics. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used for data analysis in this study. The descriptive statistical analysis of mean range was used to identify the level of six management practice factors in Wuhan IT SMEs. Pearson Correlation Analysis was used to identify the relationships between independent variables (planning, communication, information collection, appraisal, feedback and reward) and dependent variable (effectiveness of performance management). Furthermore, the Multiple Regression Analysis was used to test the critical factors influence effectiveness of performance in Wuhan IT SMEs. The findings showed that the information collection is the main management factors affecting the effectiveness of IT SMEs performance management, and all the six management factors have significance and positive relationships between the effectiveness of performance management. However, the performance planning, reward, appraisal and communication were the critical factors influence the effectiveness of performance management in IT SMEs in Wuhan. In order to improve the performance management in IT SMEs in Wuhan, several suggestions were forwarded at the end of this study.