企业成长:政治关联还是能力建设?

The Growth of Enterprises: To Build Political Connections or Capability?

本文强调现实中企业不仅会努力对内进行能力建设,而且也会对外寻求政府帮助,以便获得某种竞争优势。然而,资源有限的企业必须在能力建设和政治关联之间进行权衡。本文借助一个品质纵向差异竞争模型阐明,如果政府被授予的财力和处置权很大,而提升和维护产品品质优势却很困难,那么,企业将热衷于政治关联而不是能力建设,尤其是当那些无力消费高品质产品的低端消费群体比例很大时。同时,还发现,如果一个社会收入分配使得贫富差距严重且低端消费群体非常大,同时一些跨国公司占据了高端市场,那么,本土企业就很可能甘愿沦为低端行业或者产品的生产者,并加剧对政治关联的渴望。

This paper emphasizes that the actual enterprises will not passively entrust their fate to market demand and other enterprises, because they always try to not only build their own internal capacity, but also seek government helps in order to obtain some competitive advantages. However, they are constrained by limited resources and must balance between capacity-building and political connections. Based on a vertical-differentiation model, This paper sates that if the government controls a great amount of economic resources and is granted great discretion, and it is very difficult for the enterprises to upgrade and maintain the advantages of product quality, then, enterprises will be keen to political association rather than capacity-building, especially when proportion of low-end consumer groups is very large. This paper also finds that if the income distribution is seriously unfair and the portion of the poor is very large, while some multinational companies account for the high-end market, then, domestic enterprises are likely to become low-quality producers, and increase the desire for political relevance.