Contraction flexibility,operating leverage,and financial leverage

This study investigates the impacts of contraction flexibility and operating leverage on financial leverage from the perspective of the agency conflict between shareholders and debtholders. In a continuous-time real option framework, we demonstrate that shareholders’ contraction flexibility may have an adverse effect on financial leverage, and that the substitution relation between operating leverage and financial leverage is persistent or pronounced in the presence of contraction flexibility. The evidence from Chinese listed firms not only supports our theoretical predictions well, but also offers a method to examine the agency conflict hypothesis. We suggest that the high proportion of bank loans or long-term debt in total liabilities can help levered firms alleviate the agency problem arising from contraction decisions.     

战略管理范式的转变与供应链柔性模型

供应链成员企业的战略目标就是与其利益相关的联合体之间创造出一种供应链最大化效应的协同。传统的战略、结构和绩效分析框架只体现了供应链柔性竞争力的方面,要真正实现供应链柔性对于成员企业的价值,必须从代表供应链柔性能力的柔性战略视角去审视供应链。本文正是从这一角度构建供应链柔性模型,并分析了这一模型各变量间的关系及其竞争优势来源。     

新冠肺炎疫情对供应链弹性管理的启示

新冠肺炎疫情将对中国产业供应链的持续竞争力形成挑战,使企业面临人力短缺、成本增加、现金流紧张和供应链不确定性增高等问题,在企业供应链的原材料供应、采购管理、生产复工、物流以及市场等方面均会产生一定的负面影响,这对供应链弹性管理提出了新的要求。在政府层面,应建立综合、协同性的产业供应链风险管理和沟通机制,构建基于事件的产业供应链预警体系,保障企业供应链运营的资源体系,推动产业平台和产业集群带动供应链参与者建立供应链弹性体系。在企业层面,应建立基于企业事件的供应链预警体系,根据供应链预警信息和状况,合理规划供应链运营方式,运用数字化能力建设企业供应链弹性体系,稳定供应链运营,提升供应链效率。     

应急物流网络弹性初探

首先,从弹性的定义和内涵出发,结合应急物流的特性,可以把应急物流网络弹性分成柔性、可靠性来研究。通过对这两种属性的研究,总结出弹性的概念和内涵,找出影响应急物流网络弹性的规律。接着,分别研究了这两种属性的概念及度量方法,并针对应急物流特性提出了参考的度量方法,这为应急物流网络弹性研究作好了铺垫。最后,根据应急物流网络性质,提出了一些应急物流网络弹性的研究方向和方法。     

单向索—板结构计算理论及参数影响

在理想线弹性范围内,推导了在竖向荷载作用下单向索-板结构内力计算的解析表达式。根据具体实例,分析矢高对单向索—板结构体系的影响。     

财务柔性与企业绩效的动态关系 ——基于融资约束与代理成本的调节效应分析

财务柔性在为企业创造有利机会的同时,也带来了投资不经济、持有成本和协调困难,因此它对企业绩效的影响效应可能是非线性的。基于2006—2016年沪深两市非金融上市公司的数据,本文研究发现,财务柔性与企业绩效之间呈倒U型关系,表现为先增长、后下降的变化趋势。此外,考察融资约束和代理成本对于财务柔性与企业绩效之间关系的调节作用。分析结果显示,融资约束越高,财务柔性对绩效的促进效果越明显;代理成本弱化了财务柔性与企业绩效的曲线关系。进一步的中介效应检验结果表明,财务柔性部分地通过增加投资支出而间接影响企业绩效,投资支出在两者之间起着非线性中介作用。     

我国上市公司的债务期限结构——基于权衡思想的实证研究

债务期限结构的确定是企业对短期债务的优势和缺陷进行权衡的结果,此提出了债务期限结构的权衡思想,为了考察我国上市公司债务期限结构选择的影响因素,利用这一思想对其进行了详细的实证研究。研究结果表明,权衡思想能够较好地解释我国上市公司债务期限结构的选择行为,同时也表明,尽管我国上市公司的短期债务普遍偏高,但这种选择却是其理性思索的结果。     

Globalization and Greater Flexibility in the Japanese Labor Market: Exploring the Macro–Micro Link

The author explores the missing links between globalization and greater flexibility in the Japanese labor market based on review of literature and available evidence. Understanding Japan’s responses to globalization requires a nuanced approach, which accounts for its historical trajectory and social-institutional context. Along with globalization, Japan is experiencing a greater infusion of foreign capital, and an increasing presence of foreign firms. These foreign firms bring human resource practices that are more market driven and less socially embedded compared to the status quo. The diverging human resources practices of foreign firms have spillover effects that may destabilize the Japanese employment system in the long run.     

CEO career horizon,corporate governance,and real options: The role of economic short‐termism

Research Summary: Combining studies on real options theory and economic short‐termism, we propose that, depending on CEOs’ career horizons, CEOs have heterogeneous interests in strategic flexibility, and thus, have different incentives to make real options investments. We argue that compared to CEOs with longer career horizons, CEOs with shorter career horizons will be less inclined to make real options investments because they may not fully reap the rewards during their tenure. In addition, we argue that long‐term incentives and institutional ownership will mitigate the relationship between CEOs’ career horizons and real options investments. U.S. public firms as an empirical setting produced consistent evidence for our predictions. Our study is the first to theoretically explain and empirically show that a CEO's self‐seeking behavior will impact real options investments. Managerial Summary: This article helps to explain how a CEO's self seeking‐behavior may shape a firm's real option investment, which could result in different level of strategic flexibility. We argue that CEOs with short career horizons have less time to exercise their firms’ real options, which should lower the investments in the firms’ real options portfolios relative to CEOs with long career horizons. We study a sample of U.S. public firms and find strong evidence that a CEO's expected tenure in the firm is positively related to the real options investments at the firm level. We find that this agency issue can be mitigated by adopting appropriate corporate governance mechanisms such as long‐term incentives and institutional investors.     

Cognitive flexibility and adaptive decision‐making: Evidence from a laboratory study of expert decision makers

Research Summary : How can strategic decision makers overcome inertia when dealing with change? In this article we argue that cognitive flexibility (i.e., the ability to match the type of cognitive processing with the type of problem at hand) enables decision makers to achieve significantly higher decision‐making performance. We show that superior decision‐making performance is associated with using semiautomatic Type 1 cognitive processes when faced with well‐structured problems, and more deliberative Type 2 processes when faced with ill‐structured problems. Our findings shed light on the individual‐level mechanism behind organizational adaptation and complement recent work on strategic inertia. In addition, our findings extend management studies that have stressed the relevance of cognitive flexibility for responding to the demands of increasingly open, flexible, and rapidly changing organizations. Managerial Summary : Humans are creatures of habits. We tend to prefer known courses of action over new ones. In many cases, habits are good. However, when things change in unpredictable ways, the past may not be good guidance for the future. We argue that “cognitive flexibility”—the ability of understanding when to rely on habits vs. when to explore new courses of action—enables managers to switch from a “fast” decision mode, based on habits, to a “slow,” more deliberate decision mode that facilitates the exploration of new courses of action. Managers high in cognitive flexibility reflect on the situation at hand, recognize and value diversity in viewpoints, and integrate such diversity in their own decision processes. By valuing diversity, they are more likely to overcome inertia.