新时期高校文科学报工作者的文化使命

在国家文化体制改革背景下,高校文科学报也将是改革建设的重点,学报编辑队伍的使命是继续坚持创造和发掘、记录和传播优秀的科学文化研究成果,将其转化并融入于科学文化传播的河流中,参与科学文化交流与创新。学报编辑人员承担着着文化科学研究与创新、学术与科研文化传播、为社会文化科学研究工作者服务的文化使命,提升自身的专业化和学术化水平,创办有价值的高校文科学报。     

Innovation and Price Informativeness

We study whether the innovation decisions of a firm are improved as a result of information reflected in the firm's stock price. We show that firms with more informative stock prices, as measured by price nonsynchronicity, have better innovation outcomes, as measured by the number of patents and patent citations. Our results are not driven by managerial private information and are robust to various alternative specifications. We also find that price informativeness is more important to innovation when managers are less experienced or face greater uncertainty about the optimal innovation strategy, and that these effects are primarily observed in small‐ and mid‐sized firms where additional information may be of greater value. Our results are consistent with the notion that capital markets can have real effects on the economy.     

儒家传统与企业创新:文化的力量

在创新型国家建设进程中,传统文化到底具有怎样的时代价值和功能？这是一个值得研究的重要问题。本文从非正式制度视角考察了儒家传统文化对当代企业创新行为的影响效应及机理。结果表明,儒家文化对企业创新具有明显的“促进效应”,即企业受到儒家文化的影响程度越强,其专利产出水平显著越高。进一步检验揭示,儒家文化主要通过缓解企业代理冲突、提高人力资本投资水平和降低专利侵权风险等三条渠道影响企业创新。我们还发现,非正式制度的儒家文化和正式制度的法律环境在促进企业创新方面存在相互替代功能。特别是儒家文化的全员辐射效应有利于激发全体员工创新热情,进而提升技术创新成果的实际转化效率,增强专利技术对企业经营绩效的边际贡献。本文从微观企业层面揭示了儒家思想促进创新的内在逻辑,纠正了部分学者对儒家文化价值的消极认知偏见,同时丰富了“文化与企业决策”国际前沿文献,贡献了东方文化情境的经验证据。     

以“合”为贵？合作文化与企业创新

本文以2006-2015年沪深A股非金融上市公司为样本,基于上市公司网站对于企业文化的叙述和年报董事会报告两份本文,采用文本分析方法,构建两个度量企业合作文化强弱的指标,并研究企业合作文化对企业创新产出和创新效率的影响。研究发现,企业文化越强调合作,企业的创新产出越多,创新效率越高。这一结论在采用增加控制变量、利用水稻播种面积作为工具变量以及以董事长的非正常离职事件为冲击进行PSM-DID等多种方法后仍然稳健。渠道检验的结果显示,合作文化是通过提高企业内部员工的凝聚力和促进企业的“产学研”合作这两种渠道来促进企业创新。进一步的研究表明,合作文化的促进作用在竞争性行业以及地区信任程度和产业集群程度较高的地区中尤为显著。本文不仅从微观层面揭示企业文化对公司财务行为的影响机理,丰富和补充了当前方兴未艾的“文化与金融”研究,而且为国家制定建设社会主义文化强国的方针战略提供理论基础和实证支持。     

方言多样化和企业创新——中国的事实及机制

文化作为非正式制度的重要组成部分会对企业创新产生影响吗？使用企业创新调查数据库和工具变量法,以方言表征文化,本文实证检验了方言多样化和企业创新之间的关系。结果发现,方言多样化对企业的创新投入产生了显著的抑制作用。平均而言,以人口加权的方言多样化指数增加1%,企业人均私人创新投入会下降1.18%。进一步的研究发现,方言多样化对企业创新投入的影响主要在于信任效应(文化身份认同)而非文化交流效应。此外,由于自身资源、人才和风险限制等,越来越多的企业将创新过程中技术链条的各部分外包给其他企业(即创新外包),但方言多样化增加了企业创新外包过程中的交易成本,进而对企业的创新投入产生了显著的抑制作用。最后,方言多样化通过市场分割强化了对企业创新投入的抑制作用,具体表现为产品和资本市场分割程度越高的省份,方言多样化对企业创新投入的抑制作用越强。     

Cultural differences and judgment in financial reporting standards

This instructional resource provides you with the opportunity to explore how cultural differences can impact financial reporting outcomes through the judgments accountants make when interpreting and applying accounting standards. It is intended to draw your attention and awareness to culture’s impact on financial reporting judgments since financial reporting is becoming increasingly international in scope. The instructional resource begins by discussing financial reporting standards and cultural differences and then moves into presenting three accounting scenarios. The three scenarios (lease classification, contingent liability, and revenue recognition) examine how applying accounting standards requires judgment and how cultural differences can influence accountants’ judgments and the resulting financial reporting outcomes. In each scenario, you have the opportunity to identify and consider how different cultural dimensions could impact cross-cultural financial reporting outcomes. The instructional resource content allows you to consider the challenges in using and applying a uniform set of global accounting standards that require judgment across cultures.     

欠发达地区技术创新能力评价与培育研究——基于湘西地区的实证分析

基于欠发达地区技术创新能力的基本特征,重点考虑技术外溢与模仿创新对促进欠发达地区技术进步的作用,构建欠发达地区技术创新能力评价指标体系;运用熵权法评价湘西地区技术创新能力,结果发现:湘西地区技术创新能力整体水平较低,地区间发展不平衡,创新能力的各影响因素之间不协调、短板效应明显;鉴此,应实施差别化的区域、产业、知识产权政策等,破除创新短板、汇聚创新要素,推动欠发达地区技术创新。     

Do ESG ratings promote corporate green innovation? A quasi-natural experiment based on SynTao Green Finance's ESG ratings

Corporate efforts in green technology improvements are critical for enhancing sustainability; consequently, how to promote green innovation has attracted scholarly attention. This study explores whether and how environment, social, and governance (ESG) ratings influence corporate green innovation by using an independent third-party rating agency's (SynTao Green Finance) ESG ratings in China as a quasi-natural experiment. We find companies covered by the ESG rating agency significantly increase green innovation output by 3.9%, mainly as an increase in green invention patents. ESG ratings' positive effects on green innovation are more pronounced for firms whose investors are less short-sighted, non-state-owned enterprises and firms with higher degree of financial constraints. Additionally, we find ESG ratings' impact can also increase the green innovation quality and synergetic green innovation. Thus, ESG ratings from third-party institutions can effectively increase corporate green innovation, which has important implications for companies to achieve green transformation and for emerging markets to improve ESG rating systems.     

Does economics and management education make managers more cautious? Evidence from R&D of Chinese listed firms

This paper uses the innovation data of Chinese listed firms for 2015–2019 to investigate whether and how executives with economics and management educations influence firm innovation. We find that executives with economics and management educations are characterized by conservatism and risk avoidance and their firms undertake less innovative activity than other firms. This conclusion remains robust after excluding potential reverse causality. Further analysis finds that executives with an educational background in economics and management adopt a more conservative attitude toward risk when they have a low shareholding ratio or face high performance pressure. Moreover, a mechanism analysis shows that executives with an educational background economics and management are more radical and less conservative in their fields of expertise, i.e., are not blindly conservative. Finally, we determine that non-financial knowledge compensate for some of the inhibitory effects that economic and management educational backgrounds have on innovation.     

Effects of an Information Sharing System on Employee Creativity,Engagement, and Performance

Many service organizations rely on information sharing systems to boost employee creativity to meet customer needs. We conducted a field experiment in a retail chain, based on a registered report accepted by JAR, to test whether an information sharing system recording employees’ creative work affected the quality of creative work, job engagement, and financial performance. We found that, on average, this system did not have a significant effect on any of these outcomes. However, it significantly improved the quality of creative work in stores that had accessed the system more frequently and in stores with fewer same‐company nearby stores. It also improved creative work and job engagement in stores in divergent markets, where customers needed more customization. We found weak evidence of better financial results where salespeople had lower creative talent before the system was introduced. Our findings shed light on those conditions in which information sharing systems affect employees’ creative work.     

Getting it right the second time

Once a business performs a complex activity well, the parent organization often wants to replicate that success. But doing that is surprisingly difficult, and businesses nearly always fail when they try to reproduce a best practice. The reason? People approaching best-practice replication are overly optimistic and overconfident. They try to perfect an operation that's running nearly flawlessly, or they try to piece together different practices to create the perfect hybrid. Getting it right the second time (and all the times after that) involves adjusting for overconfidence in your own abilities and imposing strict discipline on the process and the organization. The authors studied numerous business settings to find out how organizational routines were successfully reproduced, and they identified five steps for successful replication. First, make sure you've got something that can be copied and that's worth copying. Some processes don't lend themselves to duplication; others can be copied but maybe shouldn't be. Second, work from a single template. It provides proof success, performance measurements, a tactical approach, and a reference for when problems arise. Third, copy the example exactly, and fourth, make changes only after you achieve acceptable results. The people who developed the template have probably already encountered many of the problems you want to "fix," so it's best to create a working system before you introduce changes. Fifth, don't throw away the template. If your copy doesn't work, you can use the template to identify and solve problems. Best-practice replication, while less glamorous than pure innovation, contributes enormously to the bottom line of most companies. The article's examples--Banc One, Rank Xerox, Intel, Starbucks, and Re/Max Israel--prove that exact copying is a non-trivial, challenging accomplishment.     

Independent directors and patenting strategies: Evidence from China

Despite the burgeoning literature on the contribution of independent boards to innovation, little is known about their influence on patenting strategies. Relying on finer-grained patent data of Chinese listed firms, this study tests the causal effects of board independence on patenting strategies, specifically, technological scope, technological proximity, and technological concentration. We show that having more independent directors on a board leads to a narrower technological scope and more overlap between current and prior technological trajectories, but there is no material impact on technological concentration. These effects are more pronounced among firms with market and technological dominance. Moreover, patenting strategies seem to benefit firms' financial and innovation outcomes, which highlights the value of independent directors as advisors.     

Innovation versus complexity: what is too much of a good thing?

What's the number of product or service offerings that would optimize both your revenues and your profits? For most firms, it's considerably lower than the number they offer today. The fact is, companies have strong incentives to be overly innovative in new product development. But continual launches of new products and line extensions add complexity throughout a company's operations, and as the costs of managing that complexity multiply, margins shrink. To maximize profit potential, a company needs to identify its innovation fulcrum, the point at which an additional offering destroys more value than it creates. The usual antidotes to complexity miss their mark because they treat the problem on the factory floor rather than at its source: in the product line. Mark Gottfredson and Keith Aspinall of Bain & Company present an approach that goes beyond the typical Six Sigma or lean-operations program to root out complexity hidden in the value chain. The first step is to ask, What would our company look like if it made and sold only a single product or service? In other words, you identify your company's equivalent of Henry Ford's one-size-fits-all Model T-for Starbucks, it might be a medium-size cup of coffee; for a bank, a simple checking account-and then determine the cost of producing that baseline offering. Next, you add variety back into the business system, product by product, and carefully forecast the resulting impact on sales as well as the cost implications across the value chain. When the analysis shows the costs beginning to overwhelm the added revenues, you've found your innovation fulcrum. By deconstructing their companies to a zero-complexity baseline, managers can break through organizational resistance and deeply entrenched ways of thinking to find the right balance between innovation and complexity.     

Observational Learning from Acquisition Outcomes of Innovation Leaders

We examine how learning from observing the acquisition outcomes of innovation leaders affects the acquisition decisions and performance of followers in an industry. Followers tend to increase the probability of acquisition and the size of an acquisition when innovation leader acquisitions produce more favorable outcomes, and reduce both when innovation leader acquisitions suffer more unfavorable outcomes. Industry competition, environmental uncertainty, prior acquisition experience, geographic proximity, and managerial incentives are important mechanisms affecting observational learning in acquisitions. Follower acquisitions perform better when innovation leaders’ acquisition outcomes convey more favorable signals, and more poorly when they convey more unfavorable signals.     

Determinants of accounting innovation implementation

Accounting innovations are often not successfully implemented or diffused throughout the organization. This study seeks to explain this phenomenon. One of the major impediments to the successful implementation of accounting innovation is that management accounting systems are generally used to serve the decision control needs of top management while at the same time purportedly supporting the decision management needs of lower level managers. To the extent that the accounting system is used for decision control, innovation creates the potential for wealth effects to occur. This prompts managers, whose wealth will be negatively affected, to resist accounting innovation. We present conditions where it is likely for negative wealth effects to occur. Under these conditions the system will fail to achieve its intended objectives. Our theoretical model examines how decentralization choices influence resistance to accounting innovation. We argue that delegation of decision rights can limit the potential for resistance in two ways—(a) by creating the environment which allows managers to ensure that their subunits are able to adapt to the new signals provided by accounting innovations and (b) by enabling subunit managers to become involved in the design of these systems. Our model also enables us to assess the consequences on organizational outcomes when subunit managers resist accounting innovations. Based on data collected from production managers, our results demonstrate the importance of decentralization choices on the effective implementation of accounting innovations.     

Finding an Alternative to Bureaucratic Models of Organization in the Public Sector

Demands for enhanced levels of efficiency and effectiveness have caused many to question traditional bureaucratic forms in public sector organizations. Team-based structures have been cited as an attractive alternative, perceived as facilitating the necessary levels of flexibility, innovation and responsiveness. Through the case of one Next Steps agency, the authors explore the difficulties encountered by rigid bureaucracies in their attempts to introduce team-working. It is argued that cultural change must act as a pivot for movement towards structural change, embodying all of the perceived positive aspects of team-working within public sector organizations. This will, in turn, facilitate the achievement of desired performance outcomes.     

Egalitarianism and international investment

This study identifies how country differences on a key cultural dimension—egalitarianism—influence international investment flows. A society's cultural orientation toward egalitarianism is manifested by intolerance for abuses of market and political power and a desire for protecting less powerful actors. We show egalitarianism to be based on exogenous factors including social fractionalization, dominant religion circa 1900, and war experience from the 19th century. We find a robust influence of egalitarianism distance on cross-national flows of bond and equity issuances, syndicated loans, and mergers and acquisitions. An informal cultural institution largely determined a century or more ago, egalitarianism exercises its effect on international investment via an associated set of consistent contemporary policy choices. But even after controlling for these associated policy choices, egalitarianism continues to exercise a direct effect on cross-border investment flows, likely through its direct influence on managers' daily business conduct.     

Discrete games with flexible information structures: an application to local grocery markets

Game‐theoretic models are frequently employed to study strategic interaction between agents. Empirical research has focused on estimating payoff functions while maintaining strong assumptions regarding the information structure of the game. I show how to relax informational assumptions to enhance the credibility of empirical analysis in discrete games. I apply the method to data on the entry and exit patterns of grocery stores. The model provides useful bounds on equilibrium outcomes. In addition, the empirical analysis indicates that more restrictive informational assumptions can generate qualitatively misleading counterfactual outcomes.     

Cultural Relevance of Western Accounting Systems to Developing Countries

It has been suggested recently that the accounting systems used in developing countries may be irrelevant to their needs because they originate in Western countries with different cultural values. The accounting literature on this point, however, is vague in its assessment of exactly what aspects of Western accounting systems fail to meet the test of relevance. Furthermore, it is not clear whether the differences between the needs of users in various countries are differences in kind or only differences in degree. This article analyses these issues by introducing technical considerations in addition to the behavioural ones usually discussed and by separating out problems of accounting measurement from problems of accounting disclosure. This distinction is used to argue that it is the specific disclosure rules of particular calculations inherent in Western accounting systems rather than the transaction cost database that are most likely to fail to satisfy the needs of users in developing countries. The effect of the importation of the French Unified Accounting System to Lebanon is examined and an amended version of the Hofstede-Gray cultural accounting framework is used to clarify the concept of cultural relevance.     

Independent boards and innovation

Much research has suggested that independent boards of directors are more effective in reducing agency costs and improving firm governance. How they influence innovation is less clear. Relying on regulatory changes, we show that firms that transition to independent boards focus on more crowded and familiar areas of technology. They patent and claim more and receive more total future citations to their patents. However, the citation increase comes mainly from incremental patents in the middle of the citation distribution; the numbers of uncited and highly cited patents—arguably associated with riskier innovation strategies—do not change significantly.