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In line with several crop-production enhancement plans, there has been an emerging political and micro-institutional reform: the replacement of team effort by farm households as the basic crop-production element. Such an ideological shift is credited from the incompetent incentive system of team contexts, which in turn is caused by regulations produced by egalitarianism. In this regard, statistical evidence about the impacts of agricultural decollectivization and other economic policies on China’s farm production are discussed. To elaborate the subject, different levels (national and provincial) of institutional and other types of reforms, together with the transitions of household contracting and baogan daohu procedure are included. Econometric findings suggest that adaptation to new agricultural policies will be facilitated or will only be made possible when modest productivity gain is present, and when the crop involved is corn.

Despite the problems with the representativeness and generalizations of the Dahe data set, such information allows statistical investigations of economic behaviors of teams and team members during the collective period of crop production. Findings suggest that (1) a discretion-oriented, and not a coercive implementation of work codes, significantly adds to the fraction of work days and performance; and (2) the effective incentive system comprises heightened use and improved procedures on contribution-based cash disbursements. Another regime that marked the development of farm productivity and agricultural reforms was the post-collective era, where marginal rewards were viewed as effective compensation so as to achieve optimal performance and where household farming (that is, the baogan daohu, was recognized as a crucial task to the success of agriculture economics.

This chapter examines incentive systems in automotive plants in Russia and China. The point of departure here is the distinction between job-based systems, where the associated tasks are determined as precisely as possible for each job, and person-based systems, which assign tasks not to certain jobs but to certain competence or performance levels. While job-based systems are more typical for Russia, person-based systems prevail in China. The chapter then turns to variable compensation elements and performance reviews and examines how supervisors deal with performance appraisals. It reveals considerable differences between Russian and Chinese sites. The most notable difference concerns the use of performance appraisals. The Russian plants are characterized by a punishment culture that undermines the motivational effects of the incentive systems.

The case for government intervention in incentive pay systems is not obvious. The authors argue that it makes little sense to undertake any reforms without detailed simulations of what they may do to the economy under alternative economic scenarios based on sound analysis and extensive discussion with labour, management, and government decision-makers.

We’re all familiar with the truism “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Managers invariably use their personal contacts when they need to, say, meet an impossible deadline, get advice on a strategic decision, or learn the truth about a new boss. Increasingly, it’s through these informal networks—not just through traditional organizational hierarchies— that information is found and work gets done. Social networks can be powerful political tools as well; few managers can resist the temptation to use their connections to discredit business initiatives they dislike or to support proposals they favor. Most corporations, however, treat informal networks as an invisible enemy—one that keeps decisions from being made and work from getting done. To many senior executives, these intricate webs of communication are unobservable and ungovernable—and, therefore, not amenable to the tools of scientific management. As a result, executives tend to work around informal networks or, worse, try to ignore them. When they do acknowledge the networks’ existence, executives fall back on intuition— scarcely a dependable tool—to guide them in nurturing this social capital. It doesn’t have to be that way. It is entirely possible to develop informal networks systematically. In fact, our research suggests that if senior managers focus their attention on a handful of key role-players in the group, the effectiveness of any informal network can be enhanced. After analyzing informal networks at more than 50 large organizations over the past five years, we’ve identified four common role-players whose performance is critical to the productivity of any organization. First, there are central connectors, who link most people in an informal network with one another. They aren’t usually the formal leaders within a unit or department, but they know who can provide critical information or expertise that the entire network draws on to get work done. Then there are boundary spanners, who connect an informal network with other parts of the company or with similar networks in other organizations. They take the time to consult with and advise individuals from many different departments—marketing, production, or R&D, for instance—regardless of their own affiliations.