A Structural Analysis of Personnel Evaluation in Zhenguan Zhengyao
1. Question
Why do rewards and punishments serve as a device by which the OS, a decision-making governing institution, maintains itself?
2. Abstract
In an organization, personnel evaluation, rewards, and punishments are not merely matters of human resource administration. Whom the organization rewards, whom it punishes, and what it publicly defines as merit show all members what the organization regards as correct behavior and what it does not allow.
This study examines the structural role that personnel evaluation played in state governance, based on dialogues between Emperor Taizong and his ministers in Zhenguan Zhengyao, as well as records of rewards, punishments, and posthumous honors given to key officials. It also clarifies how rewards and punishments affect an organization’s value criteria, direction of loyalty, personnel allocation, self-correction function, and institutional memory, and then derives insights applicable to modern organizations.
3. Method
This study extracts, as Layer 1 facts, the records in Zhenguan Zhengyao concerning the dialogues between Emperor Taizong and his ministers, especially those related to rewards, punishments, and honors granted to important officials.
It then reconstructs, in Layer 2, what kinds of actions were evaluated and on what value criteria the system of rewards and punishments was operated. Finally, it derives, in Layer 3, insights that remain applicable to modern organizations.
4. Layer 1: Fact
1) Personnel evaluation is not merely a “reward” but a declaration of value criteria
In Chapter 3 of the Renxian section of Zhenguan Zhengyao, there is a record that Emperor Taizong placed Fang Xuanling in a high position as a contributor to the founding of the dynasty, and Wei Zheng in a high position as a contributor to stabilizing the state after its founding, and granted each of them a ceremonial sword. What matters here is not simply that he gave rewards to individuals. More importantly, he publicly declared what the state regarded as the most important kinds of merit.
Also, Chapter 6 of the On Criminal Law section records the punishment of Gao Zengsheng, who slandered Li Jing and violated military law. Gao Zengsheng had been a meritorious retainer since the time of the Qin Prince’s household, and some voices asked for pardon based on his past service. However, Taizong rejected this request. He acknowledged Gao’s earlier merit, but stated that if the state was to govern and uphold the law, it could not grant special pardon merely because someone was a meritorious official, because that would create improper expectations among other meritorious officials and weaken legal order.
In other words, Taizong acknowledged merit, but treated violations of law as a separate matter and punished them accordingly.
2) Personnel evaluation functions as a device that justifies personnel allocation
In Chapter 4 of the Renxian section, there is an episode in which Taizong asked Wang Gui to assess the other ministers and also to assess himself. Wang Gui said that he was inferior to Wei Zheng in remonstrance, inferior to Fang Xuanling in devotion, inferior to Li Jing in both civil and military talent, inferior to Wen Yanbo in clarity in government affairs, and inferior to Dai Zhou in practical administrative processing. At the same time, he said that he had strength in removing harmful elements and recommending good ones.
This episode shows that state governance was not supported by one all-powerful person, but by a combination of people with different strengths. Furthermore, Taizong’s decision to value Wang Gui, whose strength was not outstanding specialization in one field but the ability to judge people and place them properly, shows that Taizong valued not only talent itself but also the appropriateness of personnel allocation.
Therefore, personnel evaluation is not merely an act of praising excellent people. It is also a device that justifies who should be placed in which position and thereby sustains the division of roles across the whole organization.
3) Personnel evaluation determines the direction of loyalty
In the case of Gao Zengsheng, Taizong said that he did not forget Gao’s past merit, yet he still refused a special pardon because of Gao’s false accusation against Li Jing and his violation of military law. Taizong also stated that if a meritorious official were pardoned simply because of past service, then other meritorious officials would also come to violate the law.
What this shows is the reality that people do not act only according to formal loyalty. In practice, they watch what is actually forgiven and what is actually protected, and they adjust their behavior accordingly. Thus, rewards and punishments are not merely ex post administrative measures. They are also signals that determine where the loyalty of organizational members will be directed.
If an organization allows exceptions not on the basis of principle but on the basis of private relationships or past service, the loyalty of its members will turn away from rules and institutions and toward personal ties and factions.
4) Personnel evaluation determines whether the correction function lives or dies
In Zhenguan Zhengyao, Wei Zheng repeatedly offered remonstrance, and Taizong accepted it and highly valued it. In particular, in Chapter 4 of the Ruler and Minister section and elsewhere, Taizong’s attitude of encouraging direct speech is clearly shown.
In a state understood as an OS, remonstrance corresponds to the self-correction function. However, remonstrance often contains views that are unpleasant to the ruler and is therefore easily rejected. If those who speak frankly are treated coldly while those who remain silent survive through self-protection, then no one will continue to perform the correction function.
Therefore, what is rewarded is not merely a question of whom to praise. It is a question of whether the OS can correct its own errors or whether it will lose its self-correction capacity and move toward a closed system.
5) Personnel evaluation functions as a memory device that maintains the OS even after death
Chapter 3 of the Renxian section records that after the death of Wei Zheng, Taizong deeply mourned him, posthumously granted him the title of Sikong, gave him the posthumous name Wenzhen, personally composed an inscription to be carved on stone, and granted his household nine hundred taxable households. Chapter 6 of the same section records that Taizong highly valued Yu Shinan for his loyalty, learning, literary talent, and calligraphy, and that after Yu’s death he deeply mourned him, arranged his funeral at state expense, granted him burial goods, posthumously awarded him the office of Minister of Rites, and gave him the posthumous name Wenyi.
This shows that evaluation does not end with rewards given during one’s lifetime. Posthumous honor functions as a normative message to later generations. It inscribes into historical memory what kind of minister should be regarded as ideal.
Therefore, personnel evaluation is not only a short-term incentive mechanism. It is also a long-term institutional memory device that preserves the norms of the organization.
5. Layer 2: Order
Personnel evaluation is a device that makes an organization’s value criteria visible.
Who is promoted, who is demoted, who is praised, and who is excluded—members observe these facts and learn what the organization truly values. No matter how beautiful the formal ideals may be, if actual rewards and punishments operate on different standards, people will adjust their behavior to the actual standards.
In this sense, rewards and punishments are not neutral personnel procedures. They are control devices that maintain or degrade the OS through the following five functions:
- the function of declaring what counts as correct merit
- the function of justifying personnel allocation and proper placement
- the function of directing the loyalty of members
- the function of protecting the self-correction mechanism by preserving remonstrance and dissent
- the function of preserving ideal conduct in institutional memory for the next generation
Therefore, in an organization where rewards and punishments are appropriate, the behavior of members is more likely to align with organizational purpose. By contrast, in an organization where rewards and punishments are distorted, members begin to optimize not for the institution, but for private interest, factions, self-protection, and flattery. This is why rewards and punishments function as a device for maintaining the OS.
6. Layer 3: Insight
Personnel rewards and punishments are not simply about whom to praise. They are a maintenance device of the OS that determines what kind of behavior an organization reproduces as correct.
In Zhenguan Zhengyao, the objects of evaluation included founding merit, stabilizing merit, remonstrance, institutional operation, military achievement, and cultural correction functions. This shows that the Tang governing OS was not sustained by a single type of ability, but by the proper evaluation of multiple roles.
Conversely, when rewards and punishments become distorted, the organization does not collapse immediately, but it begins to deteriorate quietly. This is because members no longer adjust their behavior to what is right for the organization, but to what is actually rewarded. Once evaluation criteria are distorted, the reproduction of behavior also becomes distorted. When this continues over time, the formal system may still remain, but the substance of the OS becomes something different.
This shows that in OS Organizational Design Theory, the personnel reward-and-punishment system, namely H (Human Resource Governance), is not a mere administrative function but one of the central maintenance functions of the OS.
From this perspective, personnel reward-and-punishment H is derived as a core variable necessary for the OS as a governing institution, because it controls what is rewarded, what is protected, and what is punished.
7. Implications for the Present
Even in modern organizations, if promotion and evaluation are determined not by ability, role performance, and contribution to the organization, but by flattery toward superiors or the depth of private relationships, members tend to take one of two paths.
One path is to adapt themselves to the distorted criteria and optimize their behavior not for organizational purpose but for the will of those in power.
The other path is to give up on the organization and leave it.
In such cases, what appears on the surface as a problem of labor shortage is not simply a hiring problem. It is often the result of the organization’s inability to use existing people properly, retain them, and protect those who perform the correction function. Those people are often the first to fall silent or to exit.
Therefore, when an organization speaks of labor shortage, what should first be examined is not the number of recruits, but what is rewarded, what is protected, and what is punished. The organization’s standards of reward and punishment determine what kind of people the organization will reproduce in the future.
8. Conclusion
Whether in a state or in a company, as long as personnel evaluation remains sound, the organization can maintain itself. But once the standards of reward and punishment become distorted, the organization begins to reproduce its own deterioration.
An organization is not maintained by ideals alone. In the end, it is maintained by whom it protects, whom it promotes, and whom it punishes.
Rewards and punishments are not merely a system for processing people. They are a device for maintaining the organization by declaring value criteria, directing loyalty, protecting the self-correction function, and passing institutional memory to the next generation.
Therefore, the question of what is evaluated is directly connected to the question of what kind of organization will be reproduced.
9. Source Texts
Harada Tanenari, Shinshaku Kanbun Taikei: Zhenguan Zhengyao (Vol. 1), Meiji Shoin, 1978.
Harada Tanenari, Shinshaku Kanbun Taikei: Zhenguan Zhengyao (Vol. 2), Meiji Shoin, 1978.