A Comparison of academic staff management practices in Chinese and Australian Universities

This study investigated five Chinese higher education institutions in relation to management of academic staff. The study compared these practices with those used in three Australian universities. The results demonstrated that the Chinese universities provide more freedom to academic staff in terms of how staff spend their time at the university. However, there are more strict measures to control teaching staff’s punctuality in attending their classes and to have detailed planning and teaching documentation. There are also additional teaching evaluations at both school and university levels, together with student evaluation. Chinese higher education staff management places greater emphasis on extrinsic financial rewards to improve staff performance than do their Australian counterparts. The income of Chinese academic staff is performance based and closely connected to their teaching, supervision, research and management workload. This approach initially came from the West and is now adopted by Chinese higher education management, reflecting Chinese socialist principles regarding income distribution. This measure of distribution is a very important motivational factor designed to enhance staff performance. This study provides an understanding as to the reasons why differences exist in management practices in China and Australia and offers some explanations from historical, political and social culture perspectives. This research identifies both positive and negative aspects of the two systems and suggests that learning good management practices from each other may bring positive changes to the productivity of higher education in both countries.C