On the one hand, performance appraisal can bring many benefits to organizational performance. On the other hand, the context in which the organization is also has influences on the implementation of performance appraisal. When a performance appraisal program is implemented, it needs to interact with wider contexts. The contexts are in two crucial categories: internal context which means the organization itself and external context which means the context around the organization (Neely and Gregory et al., 2005).
2.4.1 Internal context or environment
In the conducted survey (Wanjiku and Sakwa, 2013), several organization internal context factors may influence the implementation of performance appraisal, such as organization culture, the relationship between supervisor and employees, office infrastructure, functional structure and others. At first, the performance appraisal system should consider the organization culture. The performance appraisal system of an organization needs to be designed to be suitable for the organization. For example, if the organization culture is not so positive and based on blame, when someone is asked to measure the weakness of the operation, the organization culture encourage people to lie, then the measure cannot function well (Neely and Gregory et al., 2005). The nature of the organization is another factor which has impacts on performance appraisal which means that the organization belongs to public sectors, private sectors or manufacturing sectors. The situations in public sectors and private sectors are different (Budhwar and Boyne, 2004). In private sectors, the productivity and the sales can be directly regarded as the foundation of measurement. However, in public sectors, sometimes the evaluation criteria is not quite clear (Budhwar and Boyne, 2004). Hence, the situations of performance appraisal are different.
2.4.2 External context or environment
Performance appraisal researches have begun to discuss how the social context can affect the performance appraisal (Levy and Williams, 2004). Five main external contexts the organization should pay attention in order to have effective performance appraisal include the social values, the legal or politics system, the economic environment, the technological level and the geographic factors (Murphy and Cleveland, 1999). Some environments affect the performance appraisal more directly (such as the legal system), while others may have indirect influences (for example, the social values). For example, American managers may more emphasize on individual performance, while Japanese managers may put more attention on the ability to work with a group when assessing the performance of the same employee.
3. Case study
This section will take Lenovo Group as an example to illustrate the concepts of performance appraisal. Firstly, brief introductions of Lenovo Group and its performance appraisal system will be presented. Then there is an analysis on the performance appraisal. At lase, some issues and challenges which the Group face will be stated.
3.1 Introduction of Lenovo Group
Lenovo Group was established in 1984 which has forty- two thousand employees. It is a huge diversified development technological enterprise in the information and computer industry with innovative and international concepts. Now the whole group consists of Lenovo and previous IBM personal computing division. Since 1996, the sales of its computer stay remain at the first position in Chinese market. In 2013, the computer sales of Lenovo have ranked the first in the world, which makes it become the world’s largest personal computer manufacturer. As the leading enterprise in the computer industry, Lenovo Group takes part in nearly all stages, from developing, producing to sales and after-sale service. The products are reliable, safe and high quality. The Group aims at helping all the customers and partners to be successful. It has two headquarters in the world. One is in Beijing,
