OKR是什么及为什么能提升团队绩效?——柔性导向绩效管理实践案例研究

What is OKR and Why it is Important for Team Performance? A Case Study of Flexibility-Oriented Performance Management

许多以团队模式运作的科技企业关注并实施OKR绩效管理,但是对OKR的本质是什么、为什么能提升团队绩效尚有不同的认识。通过对中国移动互联网行业B科技公司OKR绩效管理实践及其作用机制分析,研究发现:第一,将OKR提炼为柔性导向绩效管理实践,包括"目标有挑战"、"迭代目标"、"目标灵活调整"及"目标实现与绩效薪酬弱挂钩"等,拓展了传统意义上的理解。第二,分析了柔性导向绩效管理实践不仅促进团队任务绩效,还对客户满意度和团队双元能力等广义团队绩效有积极影响。第三,识别了柔性导向绩效管理提升广义团队绩效的三个中介机制,即知识获取、情绪唤起和参与共创,形成的中介过程框架进一步打开了柔性导向人力资源实践与团队绩效的"黑箱"。研究结论亦为组织将柔性导向绩效实践应用于团队管理提供了基本原则和可资借鉴的方法。

Many high-tech companies that successfully use teamwork pay attention to and apply the objectives and key results(OKR)approach to performance management.However,people have different views of what the OKR is and why is it essential for team performance.The study concludes that the essence of OKR is the flexibility-oriented performance management practice which is one of HRM practices targeted to strategic flexibility.The study lets the practical phenomenon of improving team performance through flexibility-oriented performance management practice join the theoretical conversation of HRM effectiveness study.First,HRM effectiveness studies mainly adopt HRM system or bundle perspectives.Studies from these’’abstract’’perspectives assumed that all HRM practices contribute equally to performance when operationalizing HRM-related variables,which is inconsistent with reality.Studies on the individual HRM practice can reveal the unique effects of each HRM practice on performance better.Unfortunately,there are few studies like this.Second,an organization is a nested structure in which individuals are nested in teams and teams are nested in an organization.HRM effectiveness studies have successively demonstrated significant effects of HRM practices on organizational and individual outcomes,but there are few studies on the relationship between HRM practice and team outcomes.Moreover,it is not clear whether mediating mechanisms in these few studies of HRM practice and team performance can be borrowed to fully explain the team effectiveness of the flexibility-oriented HRM practice.To understand mediating mechanisms between the flexibility-oriented HRM and team performance,studies need to further develop theory from practical phenomena.The study uses the case study method and takes the B high-tech enterprise in the Chinese mobile Internet industry as an example.The source of data includes semi-structured interviews,archives(for example,previous non-confidential OKRs),and external sources.The research process includes:classify and consolidate the collected data;following cyclical coding and multi-order coding approaches,two researchers code the data;use tables and figures to display the characteristics and key elements of the B enterprise’s OKR practice and provide evidence for effects and mediating mechanisms of OKR on product teams’performance.Research findings are:(1)four genericities(setting objectives and key results,agile process management,performance review and evaluation,and performance development)and twenty categories(including challenging goal setting,goal iteration,goal flexibility,and weakly link goal to performance and pay,etc.)consisted of flexibility-oriented performance management practice;(2)developed related propositions of flexibility-oriented performance management practice affecting generalized team performance,such as team task performance,customer satisfaction,and team ambidexterity;(3)three process mechanisms of flexibility-oriented performance management to improve generalized team performance were identified,which involve knowledge acquisition,emotional arousal,and co-creation by participation.Three process mechanisms also formed a mediating process framework.First,by exploring theoretical issues behind the practical phenomenon,research bridges a connection between OKR performance management and strategic human resource management.Second,a series of propositions summarized in the paper expand the study of individual HRM practice and generalized team performance.Specifically,studying performance management practice enriches the study of individual HRM practice;focusing the effect of flexibility-oriented HRM practice on the team level,and focusing on generalized team performance,enriches studies of HRM practice on team outcomes.Third,the mediation mechanism and the process framework enrich the study of applying Ability-Motivation-Opportunity(AMO)theory to focus on team-level outcome variables and refine or expand the mediating mechanism of existing HRM practice and team performance studies.Besides,research findings also provide principles and guidelines for organizations to apply the flexibility-oriented performance practice to team management.