公司特征、行业特征和并购战略类型的实证研究

This paper studies 148 related and 169 unrelated acquisition cases conducted by Chinese listed firms from 2001 to 2004 and explores firm and industry characteristics of these firms prior to their acquisition. Results show that there are significant pre-acquisition differences between firms pursuing related acquisition and firms pursuing unrelated acquisition in terms of firm performance, business risk, firm size, proportion of state shares and degree of diversification profile. Except for differences in internal capital as represented by undistributed profit per share, there is no significant difference in other aspects of available resources and industry performance. Translated and revised from Guanli Shijie 管理世界 (Management World), 2007, (3): 130–137     

Understanding Complexity: the Curvilinear Relationship Between Environmental Performance and Firm Performance

The nature of the relationship between environmental performance (EP) and firm performance (FP) of corporations is a long standing and contentious issue in the literature. This study is intended to advance this debate by arguing for the existence of curvilinear relationship and empirically testing the same using survey data on UK manufacturing firms. FP is captured in terms of growth in sales and market share. Our results show evidence for a quadratic relationship—as firms improve their EP, they seem to achieve much higher levels of FP. These results are consistent with the resource-based view of a firm; as firms engage in EP activities, they are able to gain inimitable knowledge that helps in further learning to further improve performance. Based on our results, we suggest that new studies focus on strategies to extend the period of increasing returns and maximizing the benefits of the positive association between EP and FP.     

Effect of Alliance Orientation on Firm Performance: An Empirical Study on High-Technology Firms in China

Based upon the dynamic-capability view and social capital theory, this paper examines the effect of alliance orientation on firm performance. Hypotheses are tested with data collected from 195 high-tech firms in China. Results show that alliance orientation has a significant and positive effect on firm performance. Moreover, market dynamism exerts a positive moderating effect on the relationship between alliance orientation and firm performance, whereas technological dynamism negatively moderates the relationship. Moreover, relational capital partially mediates the same relationship and the interaction effects of alliance orientation and market dynamism on firm performance.     

The Impact of Resources and Strategic Orientation on Small Retail Firm Performance

This study examined the relationship between firm resources, strategic orientation, and performance in small retail firms. Surveys were mailed to small retailers throughout Tasmania, Australia. Responses (n = 384) showed resources positively related to performance were informational (business information systems) and access to financial capital. Strategic orientation (prospector and defender/analyzer) were positively related to performance. Further, both a prospector and defender/analyzer orientation positively mediated the relationship between resources and performance, the former being the stronger mediator. The results of this study demonstrate which firm resources relate to small retail firm performance, and the positive effect, in particular, of a prospector strategic orientation.     

Firm Size and Innovation in European Manufacturing

The paper investigates the differences between small, medium-sized and large firms regarding their performance in the introduction of new products and processes. After a review of the relevant literature, two models are proposed and tested in search for different business strategies and innovation inputs connected to product and process innovations. The empirical analysis uses innovation survey (CIS 2) data at the industry level for 22 manufacturing sectors, broken down in three firm size classes, for eight European countries. Special attention is devoted to tackling the issues of possible endogeneity of the regressors and of unobserved sectoral heterogeneity. The results – strengthening the findings of previous studies – show that product and process innovations, though having some complementarities, are associated to different innovative inputs and strategies pursued by firms. Systematic differences also emerge between the behaviour of large firms and SMEs.      

A Multidimensional Approach to the Influence of Environmental Marketing and Orientation on the Firm’s Organizational Performance

Since it implies a reduction in the quality and the quantity of the natural resources, environmental degradation is a present day problem that requires immediate solutions. This situation is driving firms to undertake an environmental transformation process with the purpose of reducing the negative externalities that come from their economic activities. Within this context, environmental marketing is an emerging business philosophy by which organizations can address sustainability issues. Moreover, environmental marketing and orientation are seen as valuable strategies to improve a firm’s competitiveness. However, the literature that has analyzed the link between environmental strategies and firms’ results has been inconclusive and contradictory. In this study, we propose and test a model that analyses how the implementation of ecological issues within a firm’s marketing strategy and orientation influences organizational results. Data were obtained through a survey sent to Spanish manufacturing firms. The results show that environmental marketing positively affects firms’ operational and commercial performance and this improvement will influence their economic results. Moreover, environmental marketing is revealed as an excellent strategy to obtain competitive advantages in costs and in product differentiation. Thus, this study agrees with the researchers who affirm that environmental strategies positively affect firm’s competitiveness while reducing environmental impact.     

The Effect of Entrepreneurship Orientation on Firm Performance: A Multiple Mediation Model

Scholars have recognized the important role that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) plays in driving firm performance. However, this relationship is not yet well understood and studies have sought to examine various contingencies that might mediate or moderate this relationship. This study investigates the impact of organization behavior variables on the EO – firm performance relationship. The structural model was tested using primary data from 321 South Korean industrial firms. The results show that EO is positively related to firm performance and that adaptive organizational culture and people-centered management have a multiple mediating effect on the relationship between EO and firm performance.     

A Panel Study of Firm Growth among SMEs in Networks

An underlying assumption in SME literature, as well as among policymakers, is that networks are good per se especially for SMEs. Through accessing and utilising external resources in the network, the SME can overcome some of the assumed disadvantages of limited size. Thus networking is assumed to enhance small firm performance and thereby small firm growth. This article investigates this assumption. Analysis of panel data ascertains that a substantial number of SMEs are actively networking and that the level of networking has been maintained over a five-year period. In spite of this there is no evidence of associated short-term benefits such as growth in employment or growth in total sales resulting from the networking activities. The analyses suggest, however, that networking is associated with high growth in the geographic extension of markets, which suggests that networking sustains long-term objectives of the firms.     

Learning Orientation and Performance Satisfaction as Predictors of Small Firm Innovation: The Moderating Role of Gender

Research on innovation in the context of small entrepreneurial firms is limited. Limited available studies on innovation in small firms are devoted mostly to firms operating in knowledge-intensive or technology industries and ignore the vast majority of small firms operating in traditional and less knowledge-intensive sectors of the economy. The rapid pace of technological change and the intensifying environmental turbulence in our economy influence all firms, including the majority of small firms that are perishing at a faster rate. Innovation is a key competitive tool for survival in a turbulent environment. Thus, it is important to understand factors influencing innovation in small firms. In this paper, we explore how learning orientation, a small-firm owner’s satisfaction with firm performance, and the firm owner’s gender influence innovation in small firms. We test the proposed model on a sample of small firms located in the United States of America.     

The decision to export: Firm heterogeneity,sunk costs,and spatial concentration

Integrating perspectives of the Uppsala model of internationalization process, international new ventures and trade theories of heterogeneous firms, this paper develops a dynamic discrete-choice model of export decisions by a profit-maximizing firm. Empirical analyses based on a panel data set of Chinese firms show that sunk costs, productivity, firm size, foreign ownership, industry competition and spatial concentration are positively associated with the decision to export, while state ownership has a negative association with the probability of exporting. However, we find that the relationships are not always uniform and depend on firm-specific idiosyncrasies. The results show that foreign-invested firms and large firms (regardless of ownership) rely on productivity performance related advantages for expanding overseas, while domestic firms, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, build competitive advantage by leveraging agglomeration economies and the associated spillovers. Our results highlight the role of firm heterogeneity, sunk costs and spatial concentration in shaping the export behavior of firms.     

Firm Newness,Entrepreneurial Orientation,and Ethical Climate

Faced with the liability of newness, a scarcity of resources, and concerns of survival, new firms frequently encounter difficult ethical decisions and might be pressured to make choices that run counter to the tenets of more developed ethical and moral reasoning. This study explores the impact of newness and entrepreneurial orientation on the ethical climate of firms. Data collected from 304 individuals across 37 firms indicated that firm newness was more strongly related to ethical climate than was an entrepreneurial orientation. Results also revealed that firm newness may be usefully conceptualized in both continuous and categorical terms, with each operationalization holding a somewhat different relationship with climate. Finally, results revealed that firm size was related to several types of ethical climates.     

Linking Ethical Leadership with Firm Performance: A Multi-dimensional Perspective

Despite the importance of ethical leadership, the impacts of its different facets on firm-level performance are unclear. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm and the group engagement model, we propose that ethical leadership consisting of leader humane orientation, leader responsibility and sustainability orientation and leader moderation orientation are beneficial to firm performance, and leader justice orientation plays moderating roles. We empirically tested this theoretical framework employing multi-source survey data collected from 264 Chinese firms. The findings reveal that both leader humane orientation and leader responsibility and sustainability orientation have positive influences on both firm financial and social performance, while leader moderation orientation only has positive influence on firm financial performance. In addition, leader justice orientation positively moderates the relationship between leader humane orientation and leader responsibility and sustainability orientation and financial performance as well as the relationship between leader moderation orientation and social performance. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications for understanding how different facets of ethical leadership jointly function to influence firm performance.     

Firm Size and the Nature of International Relationships: The Case of Globally Integrated Small Firms

During the past quarter of a century or so there was a marked increase in the number of studies exploring the internationalization of the small firm. The basic premise of this body of literature was that the size of the firm mattered in the process of internationalization. Research in this area focused heavily on types of forward integration (particularly exporting), and examined a handful of key research questions: which national markets shall a small firm enter, how, and when, as well as the impact of internationalization on business performance. Rather unexpectedly, to date there have been no studies exploring the impact of firm size on the nature of relationships created by small firms. This paper aspires to address this gap in the literature by focusing upon globally integrated small enterprises. Drawing on the evidence of 755 firms in five EU countries the paper argues that there are no profound differences in the nature of international relationships created by globally integrated small firms in comparison to their large‐scale counterparts. More importantly, however, the paper suggests that power asymmetry and mutuality may coexist in international relationship, and small firms may often occupy positions of power in global commodity chains.     

Market Orientation and Firm Value

Several studies in the market orientation literature demonstrate a positive relationship between a market orientation and firm performance. However, the mechanisms of this relationship have yet to be explored in detail. This article addresses such a gap by proposing a conceptual model that links market orientation to wealth creation in firms. The model posits that a market orientation guides investment in market-based assets that may be deployed to create customer value. The realisation of customer value helps to both capture and retain customers. Quicker and more extensive market penetration, shorter sales cycles, and decreased marketing and sales costs enhance the cash flow of a market-oriented firm. This may be recognised in higher valuations, which ultimately translate into higher share prices and wealth creation for the owners of the firm. This model is used to describe the creation of value in the Major Business Division of BT, a large information technology service company. Recent success in this Division of BT is attributed to the creation of a market orientation and customer value-based strategy and processes. The experience of BT provides a clear illustration of how a market oriented firm creates value for both customers and shareholders.     

The environmental effect of trade liberalization: Evidence from China's manufacturing firms

While prior literature on trade liberalisation and the environment has mostly focused on the macroeconomic ramifications, this study explores at the firm level whether and how changes of trade barriers brought about by China's accession to the WTO may impact on its manufacturing firms’ environmental performance. Adopting a difference-in-differences (DID) methodology, we document the effects of tariff reductions on improving firm-level SO2 emission intensity, and the key corporate strategic decisions responsible for delivering the observed results, with robustness tests covering other major pollutants. In response to trade liberalisation, firms are found to increase labour resources for environmental protection and to improve their production processes to reduce emission intensity. This study contributes to the literature by investigating at the level of the operating firm how output and input tariff reductions may impact on environmental performance and uncovering for the first time the specific actions responsible for the results.     

Firm heterogeneity and lobby participation

The structure of protection across sectors has been interpreted as the result of competition among lobbies to influence politicians, but lobbies have been treated as unitary decision makers and little attention has been devoted to the importance of individual firms in this process. This paper builds a model where individual firms determine the amount of resources to allocate to political contributions and shows that, in the presence of a fixed cost of channeling political contributions, it is efficient for a lobby to be formed by the largest firms in a sector. Therefore the size distribution of firms plays an important role: sectors with a higher share of firms above a given size exhibit higher intensity of political activity. This prediction is borne out by the data: industries characterized by higher firm size dispersion obtain a higher level of protection. The model is also tested against the leading ‘Protection for Sale’ paradigm, employing a newly matched data set on firm-level political contributions. The empirical evidence shows that, accounting for individual firm behavior, the model explains a larger fraction of the variation of protection across sectors.     

The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation,Technological Capability,and Consumer Attitude on Firm Performance: A Multi‐Theory Perspective

Despite the maturing entrepreneurial orientation literature, limited advance has occurred in the theoretical aspect of entrepreneurial orientation–firm performance relationship, and wide‐ranging empirical investigations are few. The authors address these concerns by testing a comprehensive model and by extending the theoretical boundary. Specifically, drawing on dynamic capability theory, core competence perspective, and consumer theories, we argue that technological capability is central for growth and financial performance of an entrepreneurially oriented firm. We introduce a construct called consumer attitude dynamism. We reason that this variable influences the growth of entrepreneurial firms. Our theory and empirical results primarily contribute to the entrepreneurship literature.     

Retail Philanthropy: Firm Size,Industry, and Business Cycle

This article investigates the effects of firm size, profitability, industry affiliation, and the business cycle on retailer philanthropy. The importance of industry and firm effects on giving was analyzed with regression models using industry-fixed effects as well as firm strategy variables. The analysis included instrumental variables methodology to account for simultaneity in the charitable giving–profits relationship. Data were gathered from the IRS Corporate Statistics of Income Sourcebook, data that provide firm size class measures covering the entire firm size distribution ranging from small retailers up to large multi-national retail firms. Retailer philanthropy was measured as the ratio of charitable contributions to total receipts. Important findings include a cubic relationship between retailer philanthropy and firm size; industry effects stronger than those observed for retail profit; and the absence of business cycle effects. The empirical research relating retail charitable giving to firm attributes including firm size and advertising, industry and business cycle factors are unique in the business ethics literature. Prior studies regarding the importance of industry on charitable giving utilized data across broad sectors of the economy. Firms from different sectors could be expected to differ in philanthropic approach due to differences in public contact as well as differences in public relations exposure. The strong industry effects reported for this sample of exclusively retail firms, with similar public contact, provide strong evidence for the importance of industry in determining firms’ charitable strategies.     

Multiple directorships in emerging countries: Fiduciary duties at stake?

This study investigates the effect of multiple directorships on firm performance, using a database of non‐financial firms listed on the Pakistan stock exchange. Prior literature provides inconsistent evidence on the relationship between multiple directorships and firm performance in an emerging country context, which may be the result of overlooking both the large differences in institutional environments among emerging countries and the dynamic endogenous relationships between board variables and firm performance. We aim to contribute to this academic debate by focusing on directorship appointments to multiple boards in a weak institutional context. Corporate governance practices, such as boards with outside directors exercising their fiduciary duties, are crucial for effective governance in weak institutional environments. However, serving in multiple directorships is expected to compromise the execution of director duties. Using a dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments model, our findings show, indeed, a negative effect of multiple directorships on firm performance in a weak institutional environment. Building on the premise that corporate governance is conditional in nature, we also tested the moderating influence of firm size on this relationship, but we did not find supporting evidence in a dynamic model setting. Our results have important practical implications for policy makers as well as firms.     

Role of Family Resources in Firm Performance: Evidence from Tanzania

The main purpose of this article is to examine the role of intangible family resources in the performance of family enterprises in Tanzania. In particular, the article examines the role of information sharing, family patient capital and family labor in firm performance. Using a sample of 163 family firms and the structural equation model of analysis, the findings indicate that family patient capital and information sharing contribute significantly to the performance of firms. With regard to the cost of labor, the study does not show any evidence that lower labor costs improve family firms' performance, most probably because these businesses incur additional labor costs which are not directly linked to the business. Based on the results, it is concluded that the family has an influence on the strategic level of family businesses, thereby contributing to their success.