An analysis of job dissatisfaction and turnover to reduce global supply chain risk: Evidence from China

Suppliers’ labor problems in developing countries have emerged as a key risk in global supply chains. In China's coastal industrial zones, where most Fortune 500 companies have established their manufacturing bases, local suppliers are facing serious labor turnover problems. High labor turnover rates have caused poor quality, low productivity, and unfilled orders in supply chains. Applying a combination of quantitative techniques to determine the reasons why workers leave China's export factories, this research tries to identify the root causes of job dissatisfaction leading to turnover and provides managerial implications that may assist managers in dealing with labor-related supply chain risks.     

社会倾销对我国对外贸易的影响及策略

经济全球化在促进生产力增长的同时,产生了负面的影响。尤其是发达国家以反"社会倾销"为理由,提出将贸易与劳工标准挂钩,实施贸易制裁。这必将对中国的对外贸易发起挑战。我们应从中国的实情出发,找出我国劳工标准现状与国际标准的差距。在国际国内层面采取加强与国际组织的互动;加强职业安全管理及逆向采购等措施。     

The evolving pattern of the wage–labor productivity nexus in China: Evidence from manufacturing firm-level data

By employing a large dataset of nation-wide state-owned and non-state-owned manufacturing enterprises in the period 1998–2007, this paper analyzes the evolving pattern of the correlation and spread between wages and labor productivity in China's manufacturing sector and its influence factors. We find that although a significant positive correlation between wages and labor productivity in manufacturing firms exists, this positive nexus has become weak and loose. We also find that, since the 1990s, the labor productivity of Chinese manufacturing enterprises has gained a much greater growth rate than that of the wage level, and therefore the spread between wages and labor productivity has been widening over time. A variety of factors that have influenced the wage–labor productivity nexus of Chinese manufacturing enterprises are identified and discussed with regression models.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGE AND GROWTH IN CHINA UNDER ECONOMIC REFORMS: PATTERNS,CAUSES AND IMPLICATIONS

This paper investigates the patterns, causes, and implications of China's structural change and its contribution to China's regional growth. Among many other findings, our regression results show that conditional convergence exists across different regions in China. Regional structural change has a convergence effect and regional openness facilitates regional structural change. Structural shocks and structural transformation had the opposite effect on China's interregional convergence during the 1990s, though the combined effect of overall structural change is a convergence effect. We also find that Chinese regions rely more heavily on structural change for labor productivity growth as the economy evolves. In summary, the results of our empirical analysis support the hypothesis underlying the theoretical model of this paper.     

Efficiency evaluation of China's high-tech industry with a multi-activity network data envelopment analysis approach

This paper employs a Russell multi-activity network DEA model and divides the overall innovation process into the upstream Research and Development (R&D) process and the downstream commercialization process to appraise the innovation performance of China's high-tech industries from 2009 to 2013. This model can deal with the problems of intermediates, shared inputs and slack-based measure in a unified framework, and the result can provide policy makers with process-specific information on how to improve the innovation performance of China's high-tech industries. The main findings are presented as follows. First, the overall efficiency of China's high-tech industries still remains at a low level, which has its roots mainly in commercialization inefficiencies other than R&D inefficiencies. Second, for most provinces, their R&D efficiencies do not match up with their commercialization efficiencies. Finally, the innovative activities of China's high-tech industries should be driven by the market demand -oriented for the improvement of innovation efficiency.     

中国制造业外包对劳动力需求弹性及就业的影响

研究目标：测算中国30省份的生产者责任以及消费者责任CO2排放量;各个省份的净碳转移量以及进出口隐含碳排放;测算省间的碳转出量,计算8大区域的净碳转移量,并分析了碳转移的方向。研究方法：借助投入产出表,用多区域投入产出模型测算各省份各行业的CO2排放量以及省间的碳转移量。研究发现：两种责任测算的CO2排放量差别较大;广东、上海、北京、浙江、江苏的净碳转出量最大,内蒙古、山西、河北、新疆、贵州的净碳转入量最大;东部沿海、南部沿海以及京津地区的净碳转出量最大,西北地区的净碳转入量最大。研究创新：用投入产出表结合能源平衡表测算各省份各行业的直接CO2排放量;研究了省间的碳转移。研究价值：对中国的碳减排具有一定的政策建议。     

Employee ownership heterogeneity and firm performance in China

Employee ownership (EO) has gained increasingly significant attention from both business practitioners and policy makers in China. Through the examination of the implementation of EO by China's listed firms from 1992 to 2017 with a total of 3,396 firms and 36,559 firm‐year observations, we explored the relationship between EO implementation and firm performance. In general, we found that over time, EO firms outperform non‐EO firms in China, and the influence of EO is only different in nuanced aspects in different time periods according to the change of policies. The data from the most recent period, that is, 2014–2017, indicate that EO adopters have higher performance than matched non‐EO firms both before and after adoption, but the relative performance does not increase after adoption. We further examined the interactive effect between EO and executive stock ownership (ESO) schemes and found that the adoption of ESO weakens the positive relationship between EO and firm performance. Regarding different types of EO, we found lower performance in companies with high return rights but no control rights, and we found better performance when high return rights are combined with control rights. We suggested policy and managerial implications on the basis of the findings.     

Estimation of firm-level productivity in the presence of exports: Evidence from China's manufacturing

Motivated by the long-standing interest of economists in understanding the nexus between firm productivity and export behavior, this paper develops a novel structural framework for control-function-based nonparametric identification of the gross production function and latent firm productivity in the presence of endogenous export opportunities that is robust to recent unidentification critiques of proxy estimators. We provide a workable identification strategy, whereby the firm's degree of export orientation provides the needed (excluded) relevant independent exogenous variation in endogenous freely varying inputs, thus allowing us to identify the production function. We estimate our fully nonparametric instrumental variable model using the Landweber–Fridman regularization with the unknown functions approximated via artificial neural network sieves with a sigmoid activation function, which are known for their superior performance relative to other popular sieve approximators, including the polynomial series favored in the literature. Using our methodology, we obtain robust productivity estimates for manufacturing firms from 28 industries in China during the 1999–2006 period to take a close look at China's exporter productivity puzzle, whereby exporters are found to exhibit lower productivity levels than nonexports.     

Lessons from seru production on manufacturing competitively in a high cost environment

High capital and labor costs, coupled with high rates of technological and competitive change, present challenges for manufacturers in developed countries, often spurring them to offshore production to low cost sources. However, the electronics industry provides an exception to this trend, where dynamic, high cost conditions have given rise to a new production system – seru – a cellular assembly approach. Seru evolved as an alternative to lean systems approaches, manifesting important differentiated system design choices that appear to offer promise for manufacturing in dynamic, high-cost markets. This paper reports the results of in-depth, longitudinal case studies of two electronics giants who have implemented seru. The case studies describe seru's fundamental extensions to, and departures from, lean production, agile production, and group technology-based cellular manufacturing. We explain how Sony and Canon have applied seru to improve productivity, quality, and flexibility in ways that have enabled them to remain competitive. In addition, our findings elaborate the theory of swift, even flow, with implications for future research of trade-offs related to production efficiency, responsiveness, and competitiveness in high-cost, technologically dynamic markets.     

Market orientation,HRM importance and competency: determinants of strategic HRM in Chinese firms

This study examined three factors leading to a firm's adoption of strategic human resource management (SHRM): market orientation, HRM importance and HRM competency. Using a sample of firms from China, empirical results showed that the three factors are significantly related to a firm's adoption of SHRM. Given the transitional nature of the Chinese economy, the moderating effects of ownership types and firm size were also investigated. However, the moderating effects were not as strong as predicted. Managerial implications and directions for future research of SHRM in an emerging economy context are discussed.     

The impact of R&D on factor-augmenting technical change – an empirical assessment at the sector level*

The aim of the paper is to quantify endogenous factor-augmenting technical change driven by R&D investments in a panel of 11 OECD countries over 1987–2007. This paper contributes to the scant empirical evidence on the speed, sources and direction of technical change for various sectors and production factors. Assuming cost-minimization behavior, a CES framework is used to derive a system of equations that is estimated by a GMM system estimator. The estimated factor-augmenting technology parameters show that in most sectors, technical change was labor-augmenting and labor-saving. Statistically significant effects of manufacturing and services R&D were found on factor-augmenting technical change (with the highest R&D elasticities found in the high-tech manufacturing and transport, storage and communication sectors). Whereas ‘in-house’ R&D stimulates total factor productivity, R&D spilled over to other sectors has a capital-augmenting effect accompanied by a higher use of labor. The results of this study provide a starting point for incorporating endogenous factor-augmenting technical change in impact assessment models aimed at broad policy analysis including economic growth, food security or climate change.     

金融业开放与中国制造业竞争力提升

研究目标：探究外资银行进入对制造业企业加成率变化的影响和作用机制。研究方法：基于异质性企业和新增长理论，将企业异质性和新熊彼特模型有机整合到统一框架中提出命题，根据中国工业企业和海关数据库，通过外资银行进入这一外生冲击对银行业开放后的制造业企业“加成率效应”进行实证研究。研究发现：总体上外资银行进入后，进入区域内企业平均加成率显著增加。行业层面异质性渠道检验表明，行业与技术前沿差距越小、行业外部融资依赖度越高、与银行业投入产出关联度越大，外资银行进入“加成率效应”越大。分所有制类型的结果显示，民营和外资企业的正向效应更为显著，且大型民营企业的正向效应值最大。分地区和要素密集度的结果显示，东部和劳动密集型企业的正向“加成率效应”较大。研究创新：首次从企业盈利水平视角出发探讨外资银行进入对下游制造业加成率的影响。研究价值：证实金融业开放有利于提升我国制造业企业市场势力。     

中国企业参与垂直分工会促进其技术创新吗？

研究目标：研究中国企业参与垂直分工会对其技术创新产生何种影响。研究方法：利用2000~2013年中国工业企业数据库与海关贸易统计库匹配数据测算中国企业的垂直专业化指数（VSS）,继而实证分析垂直分工对不同所有制、贸易类型及组织模式的企业技术创新的影响。研究发现：中国企业的VSS从2000年的0.48下降至2013年的0.27;整体来说,中国企业参与垂直分工对其技术创新产生了显著的抑制效应;区分所有制、贸易方式和组织模式后发现,垂直分工对外资企业、加工企业及外资加工企业的创新抑制效应最大。研究创新：在Upward等（2013）和张杰等（2013）关于VSS测算方法的基础上进行了改进。研究价值：支撑了中国目前实施的“做强一般贸易、扩大一般贸易规模”的政策。该政策虽然使得企业的垂直分工程度不断下降,但不会削弱其技术创新能力。     

The impact of contextual factors on the efficacy of ISO 9000 adoption

This study investigates the importance of contextual factors on the efficacy of ISO 9000 adoption. We explore the role of various contextual factors at the firm-level (i.e., technology intensity, labor productivity, and labor intensity) and industry-level (i.e., industry efficiency level, industry competitiveness, industry sales growth, and industry ISO 9000 adoption level) that potentially impact the efficacy of ISO 9000 adoption. We carry out a hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis based on objective financial data from 438 U.S. manufacturing firms. The results show that firms with low technology intensity, low labor productivity and high labor intensity reap more benefit from ISO 9000 adoption. Firms in industries with low efficiency levels, high competition, high sales growth and low ISO 9000 adoption levels also obtain more benefit from the adoption. Our research provides supporting evidence for the context-dependent proposition of ISO 9000 adoption. Given the significant costs and resources involved, it is crucial for operations managers to assess to what extent ISO 9000 might benefit their performance before embarking on the implementation process.     

Six Sigma adoption: Operating performance impacts and contextual drivers of success

We assess the operational impacts of Six Sigma program adoptions through an event study methodology, comparing financial data for 200 Six Sigma adopting firms against data for matched firms, which serve as control groups for the analyses. We employ various matching procedures using different combinations of pre-adoption return on assets (ROA), industry, and size as matching criteria. By comparing performance outcomes across a hierarchy of operating metrics, we establish a pattern of Six Sigma adoption effects that provides strong evidence of a positive impact on ROA. Interestingly, these ROA improvements arise mostly from significant reductions in indirect costs; significant improvements in direct costs and asset productivity are not evident. We also find small improvements in sales growth due to Six Sigma adoption. Cross-sectional analyses of the performance results reveal that distinctions in Six Sigma impacts across manufacturing and service firms are negligible. Interestingly, we find that the performance impact of Six Sigma adoption is negatively correlated to the firm's quality system maturity (indicated by prior ISO 9000 certification). Further analyses of manufacturing and service firms reveals that Six Sigma benefits are significantly correlated with intensity in manufacturing, and with financial performance before adoption in services. We discuss the implications of these findings for practice and for future research.     

The effect of household appliances on female labor force participation: Evidence from microdata

We estimate the effect of household appliance ownership on the labor force participation rate of married women using micro-level data from the 1960 and 1970 U.S. Censuses. In order to identify the causal effect of home appliance ownership on married women's labor force participation rates, our empirical strategy exploits both time-series and cross-sectional variation in these two variables. To control for endogeneity, we instrument a married woman's ownership of an appliance by the average ownership rate for that appliance among single women living in the same U.S. state. Single women's labor force participation rates did not increase between 1960 and 1970. We find evidence in support of the hypothesis that the diffusion of household appliances contributed to the increase in married women's labor force participation rates during the 1960's.     

Strategic human resource management,firm performance,and employee relations climate in China

We examined strategic human resource management (SHRM) and human resource practices in the People's Republic of China to assess the impact of these practices on firm performance and the employee relations climate. We also tested whether firm ownership moderates the above relationships. Empirical results from a sample of Chinese firms from various industries and regions showed that the levels of adoption of SHRM and HR practices were lower in state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) than in foreign‐invested enterprises (FIEs) and privately owned enterprises (POEs). Both SHRM and HR practices were found to have direct and positive effects on financial performance, operational performance, and the employee relations climate. However, the moderating effect of ownership type was significant for financial performance only. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

中国装备制造业全要素生产率增长的波动与异质性

研究目标：中国装备制造业及其细分行业TFP增长率的测定与分解。研究方法：构建超越对数形式的随机前沿生产函数模型,测算中国装备制造业及其细分行业TFP增长率,并对其进行分解。研究发现：中国装备制造业TFP增长率不但在区域和省份之间存在差异,而且存在明显的内部行业异质性;技术进步和配置效率变化分别是提高和阻碍装备制造业TFP增长率的主要原因和障碍;除技术进步均为正值外,技术效率变化、规模效率变化和配置效率变化在装备制造业各行业中异质性相当明显;装备制造业及其细分行业仍未从真正意义上实现由粗放型向集约型增长方式的转变。研究创新：中国装备制造业细分行业TFP增长率及其异质性。研究价值：为装备制造业转型与升级提供经验证据。     

中国经济增长的动力转换与政策选择

研究目标：探究经济增长动因结构及转换趋势。研究方法：基于中国1980～2014年三次产业的时间序列数据,构造结构指数生产函数,采取指数分析与对数分析相结合的方法进行实证研究。研究发现：2008年以来全要素生产率贡献缩减是经济增长大幅减速的最主要因素;要素规模增长率下降与产出弹性缩减的双重挤压导致资本和劳动力规模贡献下滑;资本和劳动生产率增长双减速是造成全要素生产率大幅下降的主导因素;全要素生产率增长动力从以产业要素生产率的提升为主转向以产业之间要素配置结构的优化为主。研究创新：从三次产业的要素规模和效率进行考察,三个层次层层推进,为经济增长动力及其变迁轨迹分析创造更加广阔的拓展空间。研究价值：揭示了中国经济增长变迁的动因结构以及最新转换趋势,为旨在推动国民经济又快又好发展的政策设计提供了新的科学决策参考。     

Sources of productivity growth: Evidence from the Mexican manufacturing sector

We study labor and total factor productivity in the Mexican manufacturing sector for the 1994 to 2002 period. Labor productivity increased at an annual rate of 3 percent, while total factor productivity has null or negative growth depending on the methodology used. We conduct several robustness checks by providing alternatives measures of productivity growth. Moreover, we investigate the sources of productivity growth by studying the impact of international trade, investment, quality of the labor force and labor market institutions.