报酬方案和资源分配对预算松弛影响的实验研究:基于调整型资源分配方式的一个检验

本文基于管理控制理论,探索如何发挥预算的行为驱动及组织学习作用。运用实验方法研究了不同报酬方案下,对前期预算松弛调整的竞争性资源分配与控制方式对预算松弛的影响。研究结果显示,一方面通过模拟市场竞争诱导下属提交真实的预算目标,优化资源分配;另一方面对预算参与人的松弛行为实施有效控制,二者的交互作用可以有效降低预算松弛,体现了预算控制的双重优化作用。     

Indulgence and risk-taking behavior of firms: Direct and interactive influences

This study examines the impact of Hofstede's indulgence vs restraint national culture dimension (IVR) on firms' risk-taking behavior. We argue that firms in more indulgent societies will show greater risk-taking behavior given their tendencies to be less rigid and their greater inclination for discounting risk-taking losses. We further argue that the buffers that slack resources provide against risk-taking losses and the positive expectations of potential gains from risk-taking provided by growth opportunities will further increase firms' risk-taking behavior when interacting with indulgence mechanisms. Our findings from a 37-country study support these arguments. They show that high indulgence does increase firms' risk-taking behavior and slack resources and growth opportunities intensify this causal effect. Tests of three-way interactions further reveal that the positive impact of indulgence on firms' risk-taking behavior is strongest when both slack resources are abundant and the growth opportunities are high. We extend current knowledge about culture's effect on firm behavior.     

Innovativeness as an Unintended Outcome of Franchising: Insights from Restaurant Chains

A growing trend in improving innovation outcomes is to go outside the firm's boundaries. One mechanism by which firms extend organizational boundaries is through franchising their channels. Yet, the effects of franchising on innovation outcomes have been overlooked in the literature. We propose that a firm's emphasis on franchising will affect its organizational innovativeness, conceptualized as product and process innovativeness, independently and with other firm characteristics—franchising experience, firm size, financial leverage, and slack resources. We find support for our hypotheses using a nonlinear seemingly unrelated regression model estimated using panel data from 38 U.S. restaurant chains between 1992 and 2005. The positive effect of the emphasis on franchising on product innovativeness is stronger for firms with high financial leverage, but weaker for firms with high slack resources. For process innovativeness, the effect is stronger for firms with high financial leverage but weaker for large firms, and for firms with high franchising experience and high slack resources. The findings indicate that a firm's emphasis on franchising has contingent effects on product and process innovation outcomes. Thus, franchising emerges as a competing mechanism (to alliances and joint ventures) that extends organizational boundaries and affects organizational innovativeness.     

The Management of Innovation in Project-Based Firms

How relevant are traditional innovation ideas for project-based firms? This paper asks if project-based firms provide a context supportive of innovation or indeed if they view it as useful. Based on research in firms from a variety of sectors, including telecommunications, information systems, computers, financial services and engineering, procurement and construction, the paper reveals that the very project control systems around which the firms operate serve to stifle innovation. Project-based firms—regardless of sector—prioritise efficient management of projects, tolerating the use of slack resources only when absolutely necessary. Finally innovation is not seen as universally useful, but primarily as costly and dangerous. It concludes that the space at which ‘innovation’ and ‘projects’ comes together is still dominated by ideas on how to correctly manage projects, rather than how to effectively manage innovation. Innovation of ideas on managing innovation projects may be merited.     

An organizational learning approach to digital and non-digital firm acquisition behavior

Drawing on organizational learning theory, this study investigates whether, and how, digital firms' characteristics can alter the determinants of exploration and exploitation activities through acquisitions. Considering that digital firms intrinsically differ from non-digital firms as regards their resource bundles, cost structure, and growth strategy, we argue that these distinctive characteristics can moderate the effects of slack resources and performance feedback on the propensity to conduct explorative and exploitative acquisitions. Comparing large, U.S. publicly traded digital and non-digital acquiring firms, we empirically show that consistent with our predictions, digital firms' characteristics mitigate the effects of slack resources and performance feedback on the propensity to conduct explorative acquisitions. Yet, contrary to our predictions, the findings also indicate that digital firms' characteristics reinforce the effects of these determinants on the propensity to conduct exploitative acquisitions.     

冗余资源配置条件下的企业技术创新激励合约研究

基于多任务委托代理模型的分析框架,建立了企业同时采用新增资源投入和搜寻企业冗余资源进行技术创新的信息不对称条件下的委托代理模型。通过对模型的分析,得出了企业技术创新所需的新增资源和冗余资源投入的优化配置条件,以及2种资源组合配置模式下的企业员工技术创新活动的最优激励合同条件。企业可以根据新增资源的边际收益、边际成本,以及各行动之间成本函数的相互依存性的不同组合,采取适度激励、重度强化激励、轻度强化激励、重度弱化激励和轻度弱化激励等优化激励组合方案来激励员工进行技术创新活动,从而使企业技术创新资源的配置有更多优化方案选择,以降低企业创新的风险和成本,提高资源效率和创新绩效。     

IMPACT OF PARTICIPATION IN THE BUDGETARY PROCESS ON MANAGERIAL ATTITUDES AND PERFORMANCE: UNIVERSALISTIC AND CONTINGENCY PERSPECTIVES*

Data from responsibility-center managers reveal that greater budgetary participation contributes to managerial performance and attitudes in high-environmental-uncertainty situations but hampers performance and attitudes in low-uncertainty situations. Higher budgetary participation reduces managers' propensity to create slack in high- (but not in low-) uncertainty conditions.     

Committed Versus Contingent Pricing Under Competition

Should capacitated firms set prices responsively to uncertain market conditions in a competitive environment? We study a duopoly selling differentiated substitutable products with fixed capacities under demand uncertainty, where firms can either commit to a fixed price ex ante, or elect to price contingently ex post, e.g., to charge high prices in booming markets, and low prices in slack markets. Interestingly, we analytically show that even for completely symmetric model primitives, asymmetric equilibria of strategic pricing decisions may arise, in which one firm commits statically and the other firm prices contingently; in this case, there also exists a unique mixed strategy equilibrium. Such equilibrium behavior tends to emerge, when capacity is ampler, and products are less differentiated or demand uncertainty is lower. With asymmetric fixed capacities, if demand uncertainty is low, a unique asymmetric equilibrium emerges, in which the firm with more capacity chooses committed pricing and the firm with less capacity chooses contingent pricing. We identify two countervailing profit effects of contingent pricing under competition: gains from responsively charging high price under high demand, and losses from intensified price competition under low demand. It is the latter detrimental effect that may prevent both firms from choosing a contingent pricing strategy in equilibrium. We show that the insights remain valid when capacity decisions are endogenized. We caution that responsive price changes under aggressive competition of less differentiated products can result in profit‐killing discounting.     

Innovation in Small,Project‐Based Construction Firms*

Relevant literature is synthesized to provide a holistic picture of our current knowledge of innovation in small, project‐based firms, highlighting significant gaps in the broad areas of ‘focus and outcome’, ‘organizational capabilities’, ‘context’ and ‘process’. Research findings from fieldwork focused on the construction industry are offered to address these gaps. In particular, a consensus model is given of the organizational factors dynamically at play. It is shown that typically the innovations of small, project‐based firms are closely tied to their operational activities and are pushed forward by owners who utilize very scarce resources to make progress in the interstices of normal business. This leads to an emphasis on taking up established technologies through ‘learning on the job’. Growth per se is not an important target. The motivation to act is generally to get past a survival mode of operating and to achieve stability by satisfying clients. These characteristics contrast with large organizations, especially in terms of the role of the owner, the close focus on niche markets and the lack of slack resources to innovate in parallel with normal business. It is hoped that these results will be of interest to other sectors where small, project‐based firms operate.     

上市公司预算松弛的影响因素及其对公司业绩的影响

现有的众多经验研究证明,组织中的预算松弛是十分普遍的,而代理理论与权变理论是有效解释预算松弛的重要理论。我们首次采用上市公司的公开数据,研究上市公司预算松弛的影响因素及其对公司业绩的影响。实证结果表明:1、股权性质、股权结构和企业规模是解释预算松弛的重要变量。这说明,代理理论和政府干预比权变理论更适合解释我国上市公司的预算松弛行为。2、一个严紧的预算目标有助于提高企业的ROA和ROE,但并未提高企业的主业盈利能力,而企业的盈余管理水平与预算松弛程度呈弱的负相关。所以,严紧的预算并未产生有效的激励作用,而只是增强了经理人的盈余管理动机。     

Managing value appropriation in buyer–supplier relationships: The role of commercial decision resources

The resource-based view explains firms’ value appropriation in buyer–supplier relationships by pointing to sustained differences in economic efficiency across firms. Firms with more efficient resources create more value than competitors, which in turn provides a “protective cushion” against competition. However, just as firms may differ in the economic efficiency of their resources and in the value they create, they may also differ in their information processing and how successful they are at value appropriation. Building on the literature on decision-making under uncertainty in psychology, I argue that firms may increase their value appropriation in exchange relationships by investing in commercial decision resources that allow for more effective information processing in commercial decisions. Examples of commercial decision resources include IT-based systems for product costing and tracking customers/competitors, the design of commercial organization, control systems, and commercial experience and skill.     

The Impact of the Multi-divisional Structure on Organizational Slack: The Contingency of Diversification Strategy

This study examines the relationship between multi-divisional (M-form) structure and organizational slack. Findings based on longitudinal analysis data from 62 firms indicate that M-form implementation increases the firm's capacity to manage absorbed slack in the cases of vertically integrated and related diversified firms, and unabsorbed slack in the case of unrelated diversified firms.     

Organizational Slack and Corporate Greening: Broadening the Debate

Organizational slack seems to have an ambiguous relationship with corporate greening. On the one hand, excess resources can be used to experiment with new environmental innovations, or potential green market segments. On the other, excess resources can be used to build corporate buffers against pressures for environmental improvement, such as large corporate environmental departments or environmental lobbying activity, and resist changes to the core of the organization. This paper begins to resolve these conflicting arguments by broadening the debate on organizational slack and corporate greening. It builds on recent empirical studies of slack and corporate greening, and recognizes the many potential roles that different types of slack may play in a dynamic decision–making context. Using a theoretical framework suggested by Bourgeois (1981), the paper systematizes and draws lessons from examples of the roles of slack encountered in a recent series of 35 interviews within UK public limited companies. It concludes that future treatments of slack and environmental management should incorporate a more holistic view of slack, which recognizes its dynamic, complex and often contradictory effects on decision–making in organizations.     

Managerial incentive, organizational slack, and performance: empirical analysis of Japanese firms’ behavior

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how organizational slack is created and how it affects a firm’s performance. To address these questions, we construct three equations: managerial incentive function, organizational slack formation function and performance function, and we apply 3SLS simultaneously to these functions by using the data sets of 2,791 Japanese firms from the years 2001 and 2006. From the empirical analysis of these Japanese firms, we obtain the following results: a firm’s performance declines as organizational slack increases; organizational slack is affected by annual change rate of revenues but not by managerial incentive; managerial incentive decreases as a firm’s performance improves while it increases as the structure of corporate governance is strengthened.     

Business groups' outward FDI: A managerial resources perspective

Outward FDI strategies are driven by firms' resource endowments, which in turn are conditioned by their home environment. In emerging economies, thus, the pattern of outward FDI is shaped by local firms' idiosyncratic contexts and the resources that these firms developed to fit the contexts. This includes business groups, a dominant organizational form in many emerging economies, competing with context-bound resources. When they wish to transcend their home context, they need internationally valuable resources, especially managerial resources, which may be quite different than the resources that enable domestic growth. This paper thus explores what resources drive this international growth in the case of Taiwanese business groups. Starting from Penrosian Theory, we focus on managerial resources that are shared across the member firms of a group, and thus shape the profile of the group. We find that international work experience favors internationalization while international education does not. Moreover, domestic institutional resources distract from internationalization, presumably because they are not transferable into other institutional contexts, and thus favor other types of growth.     

The Effects of Interfirm Ties on Illegal Corporate Behavior

Although numerous benefits are associated with interfirm ties, these external relationships can also have negative consequences. Theoretically based in the relational component of social capital, we identify one potentially serious consequence of interfirm ties, propensity of firms engaging in illegal behavior. Results of our study of S&P 500 firms suggest that companies benefit from a lower likelihood of illegal behavior when they have numerous weak ties to other firms. Conversely, when they become overly embedded in a network of strong ties, they are more likely to engage in illegal behavior. We also found evidence that reciprocity and status similarity influence firms’ propensity to engage in illegal behavior.     

Does exposure to a traumatic event make organizations resilient?

Why do some organizations bounce-back from traumatic events more quickly than others? While the research on organizations offers extensive insights on recovery from economic or technological shocks, there is limited understanding of how organizations recover from life-threatening events such as terrorist attacks. In this study, we build on the research on resilience and argue that organizational recovery from a traumatic event is informed by the perception of threat. Higher perception of threat increases inter-organizational collaboration and the care associated with the deployment of slack as well as to learning. We tested our arguments with a sample of US and non-US firms before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and found that, due to spatial proximity, US firms’ higher perception of threat led to a larger increase in the frequency of inter-organizational alliances than that of non-US firms. This preference was more frequently directed towards local partners and demonstrated a distinct emphasis on slack and learning. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our findings suggest that organizational resilience in the face of a traumatic event benefits not from immunity but from spatial proximity to the threat. Proximity increases the perception of threat, and with it, the impetus for adaptation.     

The effect of supplier development on outsourcing performance: the mediating roles of opportunism and flexibility

Abstract

In this increasingly competitive business environment, firms utilise outsourcing as a strategic tool to leverage globally dispersed resources so that they may focus on their core competencies and improve efficiency. The more firms rely on outsourcing, the more they depend on their suppliers, and the more important it is to manage and develop suppliers in order to achieve and maximise the benefits of outsourcing. This paper explores the impact of supplier development on outsourcing performance. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse data collected from 213 manufacturing firms in China. The results indicate that supplier development has a strong direct positive impact on outsourcing performance, and that supplier development also leads to enhanced outsourcing performance through reducing outsourcing opportunism risk and improving outsourcing flexibility. In addition to making a contribution to current theories of outsourcing, our findings also provide outsourcing managers with practical understanding and insights about the role of supplier development in enhancing outsourcing performance.     

Can Environmental Insurance Succeed Where Other Strategies Fail? The Case of Underground Storage Tanks

Private risk reduction will be socially efficient only when firms are liable for all the damage that they cause. We find that environmental insurance can achieve social efficiency even when two traditional policy instruments—ex post fines and risk management mandates with ex ante fines—do not. Inefficiency occurs with ex post fines, when small firms declare bankruptcy and escape their liabilities, limiting the incentives from this policy tool. Firms ignore mandates to implement efficient risk management because regulatory agencies do not have sufficient resources to monitor every firm. The evolution of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's and states’ underground storage tank programs suggests that mandating environmental insurance can address inefficiency due to small firms declaring bankruptcy. Comparing insurance mandates to risk management mandates, the burden on a regulator is lower if all it has to do is to confirm that the firm has insurance rather than that the firm has actually, and effectively, implemented required management practices. For underground storage tanks, we show that insurance lowered toxic releases.     

资源松弛视角下企业技术创新策略选择的实物期权模型

组织资源对企业的创新行为具有重要作用.本文通过建立数学模型,采用实物期权分析方法,分析了松弛资源与技术创新策略选择之间的关系.分析结果表明:发掘、利用的松弛资源达到某一临界点时,能对选择基于研发的自主创新策略产生足够的激励;在基于技术引进的技术创新策略越来越难以实现的情况下,正确辨识、发掘、利用松弛资源对于提高组织的自主创新能力和绩效,显得格外重要.