Imperial Group Public Relations Department’s Penalty and Bonus System

Imperial Group Public Relations Department’s Penalty and Bonus System is the workplace rule through which Su Xiangwan establishes authority over a department that has become idle in the prolonged absence of its supervisor. More than a simple payroll measure, it makes obedience, performance, and institutional recognition part of the same bargain: refusal carries a clearly stated financial penalty, while competence offers a compensating route to reward. Its importance lies in the way Su Xiangwan answers skepticism not with persuasion alone, but by defining the terms under which the department will continue to operate.

Background and Institutional Setting

The system appears when Su Xiangwan arrives to take charge of the Public Relations Department of Imperial Group. The department has been without its supervisor for some time, and the employees have grown accustomed to inactivity. The atmosphere is not merely inefficient; it has produced a working culture in which idleness can pass as normal because no immediate authority has challenged it.

Su Xiangwan’s appointment is temporary, which gives the staff an obvious basis for resistance. On her first day, she looks younger than the other employees, and several workers become even less willing to accept her authority. Their doubts are also shaped by gossip about her connection to Lu Xun. When she confirms that Lu Xun sent her to the company that morning, the revelation changes the social meaning of her position without eliminating the employees’ resentment. The department therefore becomes a test of whether authority comes from personal patronage, formal appointment, or demonstrable control over consequences.

Operation of the Rule

The rule is introduced after Su Xiangwan finds employees still refusing to return to work. She asks whether the work has been completed, and when the people who had been gossiping remain motionless, she interprets their inaction as a deliberate challenge rather than an innocent delay. Some employees hesitate and eventually leave the tea room to resume their duties, but most remain unmoved, having decided to continue their idleness.

Su Xiangwan then declares that each person who persists will receive a greater punishment: three months’ salary will be deducted. The amount makes the rule concrete and gives the department’s disorder an immediate economic cost. At the same time, the system is not presented as punishment alone. Su Xiangwan states that employees with the ability to perform can receive a bonus of no less value, provided they are capable of earning it. The structure thus offers two opposing outcomes: continued resistance results in the loss of income, while productive work creates an opportunity for financial gain.

The rule’s design is significant because it makes performance measurable through consequences even though the evidence does not specify the precise bonus formula, evaluation period, or administrative procedure. Its central principle is nevertheless clear: employees cannot remain idle without cost, and ability is to be recognized through material reward. Su Xiangwan uses the system to replace vague complaints about discipline with an explicit institutional exchange.

Conflict and Enforcement

The announcement immediately provokes further opposition. Annie, identified as the most ambitious person in the department, objects that Su Xiangwan is only a substitute supervisor and therefore has no right to record punishments. Her challenge attacks the legitimacy of the rule at its source: if Su Xiangwan’s title is temporary, Annie implies, then her commands should also be temporary or ineffective.

Su Xiangwan’s response is not to withdraw the policy or appeal to Lu Xun. The threat of salary deduction has already divided the staff between those who return to work and those who remain defiant. In that sense, the rule functions as an act of institutional speech: once Su Xiangwan announces the punishment, she attempts to turn her temporary status into immediate governing power. The employees’ movement back to work provides the first practical confirmation that the declaration has altered behavior.

The confrontation also exposes two competing definitions of workplace order. The employees treat the department’s former idleness as an accepted routine, while Su Xiangwan treats that routine as a violation requiring correction. Her system makes the conflict visible by attaching a price to the old custom. Authority is no longer measured by age, popularity, or seniority, but by who can define the consequences of refusing to work.

Consequences and Significance

The penalty-and-bonus system marks Su Xiangwan’s first decisive effort to govern the Public Relations Department rather than merely occupy the supervisor’s seat. She enters an environment weakened by the supervisor’s absence, faces gossip about her appointment, and confronts employees who openly refuse to submit. By coupling punishment with the possibility of reward, she creates a framework that is coercive but not exclusively punitive: the staff can avoid loss through obedience and can seek gain through ability.

The rule also reflects the wider pattern of Imperial Group’s world, where personal relationships and economic power continually overlap. Lu Xun’s influence helps place Su Xiangwan in the department, but she still has to make that position function in daily practice. Her response is to transform private backing into a public workplace mechanism. The result is a small but revealing shift from informal indulgence to enforceable discipline, with salaries and bonuses serving as the instruments through which the department’s hierarchy becomes real.