Reputational Bargaining With Minimal Knowledge of Rationality

Two players announce bargaining postures to which they may become committed and then bargain over the division of a surplus. The share of the surplus that a player can guarantee herself under first‐order knowledge of rationality is determined (as a function of her probability of becoming committed), as is the bargaining posture that she must announce in order to guarantee herself this much. This “maxmin” share of the surplus is large relative to the probability of becoming committed (e.g., it equals 30% if the commitment probability is 1 in 10 and equals 13% if the commitment probability is 1 in 1000), and the corresponding bargaining posture simply demands this share plus compensation for any delay in reaching agreement.     

基于科学知识图谱的盈余管理研究前沿分析

针对当前国内外盈余管理实证研究中存在的信息量繁多、关系错综复杂、研究脉络不清晰等问题,运用科学计量学信息可视化方法,绘制了盈余管理研究的科学知识图谱,进一步明晰了盈余管理研究领域的核心研究群体、权威专家、主要国家或地区、核心期刊,以及各自的平行关系。研究全面展示了盈余管理研究的前沿网络图景,对于研究者全面掌握盈余管理研究领域的发展历程和前沿状况,明晰研究方向和研究脉络具有一定参考意义。     

Stability and Preference Alignment in Matching and Coalition Formation

We study matching and coalition formation environments allowing complementarities and peer effects. Agents have preferences over coalitions, and these preferences vary with an underlying, and commonly known, state of nature. Assuming that there is substantial variability of preferences across states of nature, we show that there exists a core stable coalition structure in every state if and only if agents' preferences are pairwise‐aligned in every state. This implies that there is a stable coalition structure if agents' preferences are generated by Nash bargaining over coalitional outputs. We further show that all stability‐inducing rules for sharing outputs can be represented by a profile of agents' bargaining functions and that agents match assortatively with respect to these bargaining functions. This framework allows us to show how complementarities and peer effects overturn well known comparative statics of many‐to‐one matching.     

产业结构对创业人员活动影响的理论与实证探究

基于知识外溢理论,在对产业结构专业化与多样化影响创业活动的机理进行分析的基础上,运用我国31个省市自治区5类高技术产业1998～2008年的相关数据进行了实证检验。研究结果表明,产业结构专业化和多样化均有利于创业活动生成;从短期创业效应来看,产业结构的专业化更有利于创业活动生成,而产业结构多样化对创业活动的影响则相对有限。     

管理者关系特性对海外子公司知识获取及公司绩效的影响研究

基于组织学习理论和社会资本理论,考察了管理者关系特性对海外子公司内外部网络知识获取和企业绩效的影响。研究结果显示,母子公司管理者之间的信任和沟通频率对获取母公司知识有正向影响,海外子公司管理者和本地重要企业管理者之间的信任对获取本地商务知识有正向影响,海外子公司管理者和本地政府主要负责人之间的私人关系对获取本地制度知识有显著影响。此外,本地制度知识在母公司知识对海外子公司绩效的影响中起正向调节作用,本地商务知识起负向调节作用。     

Social cognition and the origin of concepts in Durkheim's sociology of knowledge

This paper re-examines a key feature of Emile Durkheim's sociology of knowledge from a critical realist perspective. It is argued that Durkheim's attempt to establish a social basis for the categories in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life should be understood along ontological rather than epistemological lines. This brings to light new problems with the argument which, however, can be brought fruitfully into contact with the more recent social psychological literature on collective intentionality. This yields insights into future lines of inquiry into social cognition and theories of human conceptualizing capacities.     

The Effects of Competitive Environment on Supply Chain Information Sharing and Performance: An Empirical Study in China

Information sharing in supply chains has become an important topic over the past decade. This study uses data from 617 Chinese manufacturing firms to investigate the relationships among competitive environments, supply chain information sharing (SCIS), and supply chain performance. The results of structural equation modeling analysis show that (i) international competition is positively related to all three types of SCIS whereas local competition is not significantly related to any of the three types, (ii) internal information sharing is positively related to external information sharing with suppliers and customers, and (iii) internal information sharing and information sharing with customers are positively related to superior supply chain performance, whereas supplier information sharing is not significantly related to performance. The findings enhance our understanding of the relationships among competitive environment, SCIS, and supply chain performance in Chinese manufacturing settings.     

Information Acquisition and Voluntary Disclosure in an Export‐Processing System

We study a strategic information management problem in the export‐processing trade, where the buyer controls the raw material input and sales and the producer is responsible for production. The production is vulnerable to random yield risk. The producer can exert a costly effort to acquire the private yield rate information and discretionarily share it with the buyer. We develop a sequential Bayesian game model that captures three key features of the system—endogenous information endowment, voluntary disclosure, and ex post information sharing—a significant departure from the literature. The optimal disclosure strategy is driven by the trade‐off between the gains from Pareto efficiency improvement and self‐interested overproduction. It is specified by two thresholds on yield rate: only the middle‐yield producers (with yield rate between these two thresholds) share private information to improve supply‐demand match; the low‐ and high‐yield producers withhold information to extract excess input from the buyer. The buyer in response penalizes nondisclosure with reduced input and rewards information sharing with a larger order. This strategic interaction is further exacerbated by the double marginalization effect from decentralization, resulting in severe efficiency loss. We examine the effectiveness of three corrective mechanisms—vertical integration, mandatory disclosure, and production restriction—and reveal the costs of information suppressive effect and overinvestment incentive and the benefit from concessions on the processing fee. Our study endogenizes the asymmetric supply risk and provides the first attempt to rationalize the strategic interactions of informational and operational incentives in the export‐processing system.     

Outsourcing Competition and Information Sharing with Asymmetrically Informed Suppliers

This paper studies an outsourcing problem where two service providers (suppliers) compete for the service contract from a client. The suppliers face uncertain cost for providing the service because they do not have perfect information about the client's type. The suppliers receive differential private signals about the client type and thus compete under asymmetric information. We first characterize the equilibrium of the supplier competition. Then we investigate two of the client's information sharing decisions. It is shown that less information asymmetry between the suppliers may dampen their competition. Therefore, the client does not necessarily have the incentive to reduce information asymmetry between the suppliers. We characterize the conditions under which leveling the informational ground is beneficial to the client. We also find that under the presence of information asymmetry (e.g., when the suppliers have different learning abilities), sharing more information with both suppliers may enhance the advantage of one supplier over the other and at the same time increase the upper bound of the suppliers' quotes in equilibrium. Consequently, the suppliers compete less aggressively and the client's payoff decreases in the amount of shared information. The findings from this study provide useful managerial implications on information management for outsourcing firms.     

The Effect of Language Differences and National Culture on Operational Process Compliance

With increasing frequency, firms are locating their operations in disparate countries with distinct national cultures and languages. This study develops and empirically tests hypotheses relating an operation's process compliance performance to (1) the presence of a language difference between the location of the operation and that of headquarters and (2) the national culture of the location of the operation and that of headquarters. Employing an international sample of pharmaceutical manufacturing plants located primarily in Western nations, the analysis reveals that a language difference between the location of a plant and the firm's headquarters is consistently related to decreased process compliance at the plant level. Regarding national culture, only limited evidence of a direct relationship between national cultural dimensions (at either the plant or headquarters location) and process compliance exists. However, the analysis does suggest that cultural congruence between the location of the plant and that of headquarters can relate to improved compliance performance. Such a relationship depends on the specific national cultural dimension studied. While these results are obtained in a specific manufacturing setting, they potentially have implications for process compliance in any global operation.