Firm value in commonly uncertain times: the divergent effects of corporate governance and CSR

Economic uncertainty disrupts firms’ ability to create value. Most related literature examines how various organizational characteristics affect value under extreme conditions – the global financial crisis. However, recent work in quantifying economic uncertainty now makes it possible to take a more nuanced approach in investigating the conditions under which this value reduction can be mitigated during more ‘commonly uncertain’ periods. In this paper we analyze the effects of corporate governance mechanisms and social responsibility investments on Tobin’s q across 13 years and 40 countries. Evidence suggests that shareholder-centric corporate governance policies restrict board and executive flexibility during uncertain times, and therefore stifle their ability to react effectively to adverse macroeconomic changes. We also find that CSR initiatives serve as insurance in that they preserve value under uncertainty by acting as a reservoir of social capital.     

Endogenous overhead costs,firm size,and fiscal shocks

Recent empirical observations indicate that firm size responds to cyclical fluctuations in economic activities. By analyzing the effects of endogenous overhead costs in the economy, this paper finds that in response to a fiscal expansion, firm size will increase if the relationship between overhead costs and the number of firms is positive, while firm size will decrease if the relationship is negative.     

Transmission of CSR requirements in supply chains: investigating the multiple mediating effects of CSR activities in SMEs

In recent years, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the separate areas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and supply chain management (SCM). However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the transmission of CSR requirements from a small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) perspective. Drawing on institutional and innovation diffusion theories, this paper investigates to what extent the CSR requirements of customers influence the CSR activities of SMEs and their CSR requirements toward their own suppliers. Multiple mediation analysis was performed on data from a sample of 146,060 French SMEs. The findings indicate that the CSR requirements of customers have a direct negative effect on SMEs’ CSR requirements toward suppliers. However, the relationship becomes positive when we take into account the mediating role of the SMEs’ own CSR activities (i.e. economic, social and environmental activities). Furthermore, the study reveals that the indirect effect through economic CSR activities is the greatest, followed by social and then environmental CSR activities. Our main contribution is that implementing CSR activities within SMEs is a necessary step so that SMEs can be brokers in the transmission of CSR requirements in the supply chain.     

Financial markets and firm size: The role of employment protection laws and barriers to entrepreneurship

This article provides evidence on the institutional determinants of firm size for the period 1980–1998. Using a comprehensive longitudinal database across 29 industrial sectors in 15 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, we study how labour regulations and barriers to entrepreneurship (BE) affect industrial organization in the presence of capital market frictions. We show that strict employment protection laws (EPL) and high BE negatively affect firm size in sectors that are more dependent on external funds. Our findings demonstrate that the interaction between market regulations and financial market imperfections help to explain some of the differences in firm structure across countries.     

The influence of CSR on firm value: an application of panel smooth transition regression on Taiwan

Previous studies on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm value generally belong to one of the two opposing schools of thought: the social impact hypothesis and the shift of focus hypothesis. This study, however, proposes that the relationship between CSR and company value is non-linear and neither wholly positive nor negative. We employed the corporate social responsibility index (CRSI) to test this hypothesis. The panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model was used to analyse listed Taiwanese firms from 2010 to 2012 and calculate the value transition threshold of CSR, using CSRI as the transition variable. We then applied PSTR to determine whether CSRI shows a two-regime, non-linear relationship, as inferred by our model. Empirical findings show that the threshold value of CSRI is 13.082, thus, we concluded that investment in CSR does not contribute to enhancing company value until it exceeds the value transition threshold.     

论驱动市场型企业的社会责任

驱动市场型企业社会责任理论研究尚属空白。驱动市场型企业社会责任既具有和一般企业社会责任的共同特点,又具有自身的独特属性。本文首先介绍了驱动市场型企业社会责任的基本特点,然后提出驱动市场型企业社会责任的两个独特属性：行动的自主性和责任的自觉性,结构的重构性和责任的系统性。在对驱动市场型企业社会责任分析的基础上,进一步分析了社会责任对驱动市场型企业创新的驱动机制,并提出把道德嵌入驱动市场型企业的创新决策。     

Entry,growth, and survival: The new learning on firm selection and industry evolution

This paper tries to shed some light on the seeming paradox posed by the findings in the industrial organization literature that (1) the bulk of firms in an industry are not only very small, but also sufficiently small so that they are operating at a sub-optimal scale of output, and (2) entrepreneurs are apparently not deterred from starting new firms even in industries where scale economies play an important role. A dynamic view of the process of firm selection and industry evolution is that new firms typically start at a very smal scale of output. Because this level of output may be sub-optimal, the firm must grow in order to survive. The empirical evidence supports such a dynamic view of the evolutionary nature of industries. Viewed through a dynamic lens, the often-observed asymmetric size distribution of firms becomes more understandable. The persistence of an asymmetric firm-size distribution skewed towards small enterprises presumably reflects a continuing process of entry into industries and not necessarily the survival of such small and suboptimal enterprises over a long period of time.     

The effect of crises on firm exit and the moderating effect of firm size

The liability of smallness assumption suggests that smaller firms face higher exit risks. However, does it apply during crises? We show that during downturns size reduces firms’ exit risk by less; the hazard rate increases more rapidly in size.     

The formal sector wage premium and firm size

We show theoretically that when larger firms pay higher wages and are more likely to be caught defaulting on labor taxes, then large-high wage firms will be in the formal and small-low wage firms will be in the informal sector. The formal sector wage premium is thus just a firm size wage differential. Using data from Ecuador we illustrate that firm size is indeed the key variable determining whether a formal sector premium exists.     

The nonlinear effects of firm size on innovation: an empirical investigation

ABSTRACT

In conventional studies, large firms tend to emphasize more on process innovation than product innovation. This paper explores factors that could indicate a distinct pattern of firms’ innovation-size relationship: threshold size that implies a positive effect of firm size on the probability of product innovation success; cannibalization effect that creates incentives for large firms to favor product innovations; and financial constraints that have differential effects given different firm sizes. A hypothesis about a non-monotonic relationship between the proportion of product innovation and firm size is tested with nonlinear and dynamic econometric models. For the large firms, empirical evidence shows product innovations result in an overall larger share of new products in total sales, relative to existing products in which process innovations are rooted.     

The effect of strategic alliances on firm productivity in South Korea

Using a rich firm-level data set from South Korea, this article analyses the impact of strategic alliances on firm performance, focusing on how firm productivity is affected by alliance types such as joint venture, joint technical development, technical alliance, joint marketing and coproduction as well as alliance structures such as intra- and inter-industry alliances. Total factor productivity (TFP) is estimated through the semi-parametric method suggested by Levinsohn and Petrin (2003). In addition, a two-stage least-squares (2SLS) method is applied to reduce the potential endogenous problem between productivity and strategic alliance choices. The empirical results found in this article indicate that the engagement in joint ventures positively affects firm productivity and that the formation of international intra-industry alliances has a positive impact on firm productivity.     

The effects of mergers and acquisitions on the firm size distribution

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the effects of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on the shape of the firm size distribution, by using data of the population of manufacturing firms in the Netherlands. Our analysis shows that M&As do not affect the size distribution when we consider the entire population of firms. When we focus on the firms involved in an M&A event, we observe a shift of the firm size distribution towards larger sizes. Firm size distribution becomes more concentrated around the mean, less skewed to the right hand side, and thinner at the tails as a whole. The shift toward higher sizes due to M&A is not uniform but affects firms of different sizes in different ways. While the number of firms in the lower tail decreased, the number of firms in the central size classes increased substantially and outweighed the increase in the number (and mean size) of firms in the upper tail of the distribution (consequently the overall market concentration measured by the Herfindahl index declines). M&As lead to a departure from log-normality of the firm size distribution, suggesting that external growth does not follow Gibrat’s law. Our counterfactual analysis highlights that only internal growth does not affect the shape of the size distribution of firms. On the contrary, it suggests that the change in the size distribution is almost entirely due to the external growth of the firms.

企业社会责任信息披露的价值评价研究

良好的信息披露能改善公司财务状况,提升公司形象,并反映在公司价值的增加上。那么,社会责任信息披露会给企业带来什么样的经济后果,这在相关研究中具有重要意义。为验证上市公司增加信息披露是否会提升公司价值,文章企业整体价值视角出发,利用托宾Q理论对中国上市公司社会责任信息披露与企业价值进行了实证研究。     

基于声誉视角的企业社会责任实施策略研究

企业应当如何寻求社会责任与社交媒体交融背景下的企业社会责任(CSR)实施策略?这已成为全球经济面临的现实难题,对于处在声誉压力下的中国企业更是如此。文章通过全面回顾"声誉机制与CSR之间存在关联"的相关研究成果,以来自中国的两家企业(联想与宏碁)为商业案例,从公司治理、工作环境以及企业公民实践三个维度对其CSR实践进行了详细比较与系统分析,以期验证西方学者提出的"声誉机制对CSR实施策略具有正面影响效应"观点。结果表明:声誉机制确实可以促进企业加强自我约束,选择负责任的商业实践,成为法律规制、政府监管等正式制度的有益补充和替代,对中国企业来说也不例外。最后,结合中国企业现实处境,文章提出从回报角度认知CSR、取得行业标准认证、从局部小处起步等将CSR策略性融入到企业日常运营中的几点启示。     

企业传播、企业社会责任与经济绩效关联性研究综述

本文通过对30余年来有关企业传播、企业社会责任与经济绩效关联性问题的研究文献进行回顾,介绍了企业通过大众媒体、年度报告以及社会责任报告等三种传播社会责任信息的途径,分析了基于声誉排名、基于企业传播以及基于原则与价值的度量社会责任的三种方法,以及基于市场法则、会计法则和感知调查等度量企业经济绩效的三种不同方法。在此基础上,归纳了以往学者研究三者关系时所提出的社会响应假说、权衡假说和倒U型关系假说,并相应地从变量选取、模型构建、研究结论上进行述评。本文认为,造成企业传播、企业社会责任与经济绩效三者关系研究结论不一致的原因主要在于缺乏全面的度量体系、缺乏系统的理论基础以及缺乏严密的方法等三个方面,未来的研究应注重社会责任理论和方法的完善,并利用新的数据和模型研究企业社会责任的相关问题。     

The impact of dual network structure on firm performance: the moderating effect of innovation strategy

ABSTRACT

Firm innovation is embedded in a collaboration network among researchers and a knowledge network composed of knowledge elements; the two networks are decoupled. Guided by social network theory, this study puts forward the definition and the classification of firm dual network structure, probes into the influence of dual network structure on firm performance, and explores the alignment between innovation strategy and firm dual network structure. We conduct an empirical study of 183 listed companies in China from 2004 to 2018. It is found that the four types of dual network structure all have positive impacts on firm performance, and the impact of a collaboration network is slightly higher than that of a knowledge network. Besides, innovation strategy plays a positive moderating role in the relationship between dual network structure and firm performance. Our findings provide new ideas for firms to identify and optimise knowledge and collaboration network structures and match them with innovation strategy to improve performance.     

Dynamic product differentiation strategies: an examination of the interplay of firm and industry characteristics

Technologically dynamic industries are characterised by the availability of ample differentiation opportunities. Implementing an appropriate product differentiation strategy is a critical determinant of entrant success in such industries. Firms typically have to engage in two sequential decisions. They need to first decide whether to differentiate and if they decide to do so, they need to choose between a horizontal and a vertical differentiation strategy. Despite the growing literature on the consequences of product differentiation strategy, limited attention has been paid to ascertaining the determinants of these dynamic decisions. We suggest that a complex interplay of firm-level (firm size and pre-entry experience) and industry (technology regime) characteristics impacts the choice of differentiation strategies. Empirical tests using multinomial logit models on data obtained from a census of all entrants into the personal computer industry between 1974 and 1994 support our theory.     

Firm size and types of innovation

We propose a general theory of innovation that illustrates the relative benefits of performing process versus product R&D when firm size is endogenous. A firm's size, scope, and R&D portfolio are shown to reflect the same underlying characteristic of the firm, namely manufacturing efficiency. We demonstrate that efficient firms become larger, have greater scope, and perform more of both process and product R&D. In light of decreasing returns to R&D, this implies small firms obtain more product innovations per dollar of R&D than large firms, which is consistent with evidence we present that small firms are more innovative than large firms as they obtain more patent counts and citations per dollar of R&D.     

The effect of environmentally sustainable practices on firm R&D: International evidence

Using a comprehensive dataset covering 42 countries spanning 2002–2013, this paper empirically examines the effect of environmentally sustainable practices (ESP) on R&D intensity in firms. We use three separate firm-level ESP scores that distinguish between the mandatory and voluntary compliance of environmental regulations mandated within an industry and a country. Our main finding is that an increase in ESP increases R&D intensity. Therefore, ESP encourages a higher number of innovations and there is a negligible trade-off between these two factors of firm performance. Further, the positive effect of ESP is stronger in countries where institutional quality and R&D infrastructure supports are superior. Our results have important policy implications for firms, investors and national governments.     

基于企业传播视角的我国上市公司社会责任实证研究

本文基于企业传播的视角,通过对<福布斯>2009年全球上市公司2000强中内地上市公司网站、年报和社会责任报告中有关公司社会责任的内容披露的统计分析,围绕上市公司履行社会责任的动机、内容以及利益相关者在其中的应用等问题展开实证分析.研究表明,不同公司履行社会责任的程度各不相同,呈近似正态分布,且与所属行业国际化程度正相关;上市公司中绝大多数公司社会责任受到价值驱动,只有少数公司受到财务绩效或者利益相关者驱动;目前上市公司社会责任实践的三种主要形式依次是从事公益捐赠、遵守道德准则,以及支持各种慈善事业,而志愿服务和质量管理则相对欠缺.