“穷困”促进了企业的研发投入?——环境不确定性与产权保护力度的调节效应

Does “Poverty”Gives Rise to Firms' R&D Investment?——The Moderating Effect of Environmental Uncertainty and Property Right Protection

经营困境是大多数企业都会面临的问题,但在"穷困"状态下,企业是否会增加研发投入,目前,学者并没有一致的结论。本文以财务困境、期望落差、组织下滑三种情况衡量企业穷困状态,基于2007—2014年中国上市公司数据进行分析,主要得到以下结论:(1)"穷困"与企业研发投入之间并不是简单的线性关系,随着"穷困"增加,企业研发投入呈现出先升后降的倒U型关系;(2)环境不确定性在"穷困"与企业研发投入之间起到部分正向调节作用,即环境不确定性加强了财务困境和期望落差状态下企业研发的动力,但在组织下滑时该调节作用不显著;(3)产权保护力度在"穷困"与企业研发投入之间起到显著正向调节作用,即企业所在区域的产权保护力度越强,企业越会在"穷困"状态下增加研发投入。本文对进一步理解企业经营困境与研发投入之间的关系,特别是企业所处环境对企业行为选择的影响作用具有一定意义。

Does 44 poverty give rise to firms7 R＆D investment？ This question has attracted considerable atten-tion from organizational theorists. Based on previous studies, this paper found that different scholars have different views. Some scholars have been caricatured as the ‘‘necessity is the mother of invention” perspective and the others prefer the 44 necessity is the mother of rigidity^ perspective. In order to solve the problem of inconsistency, a lot of scholars have reconsidered the situation from the number of decision reference points, constraints and other as-pects. This paper argues that the inconsistency of the previous conclusions maybe mainly due to the following two reasons ： First, there are differences in the measurement of 44 poverty^ ; Second, there are differences in the factors that affect the behavior of enterprises. To this end,we define 44poverty^ from different dimensions and hold that there ex-ist three kinds of poor：financial distress,aspiration gap and organizational decline. Meanwhile,we examine the un-derlying effect of environmental uncertainty and regional property rights. Based on the data of listed companies in China,this paper has obtained the following conclusions.First,there is an inverted U-shape relationship between 44poverty^ and the probability of R＆D investment. It means that when performance falls below, but in the neighborhood of ideal level, searching for new technologies is a key factor affecting firms7 competitive positions. At this time, rational managers will allocate resources to research and development （ R＆D） search activities in response to the poverty. But, decision makers do not direct their atten-tion to a single reference point. Rather, they switch their focus between aspiration and survival levels, and then end up selecting one of them to focus on and guide their decision. So when performance falls farther away from a target and coming closer to extinction, managers are more likely to tighten their controls, conserve resources, repeat previ-ous actions, reduce willingness to take risks, and avoid new activities, such as R＆D investment. In conclusion, there is a curvilinear relationship between 44 poverty^ and the probability of R＆D investment. Specifically, as performance falls below,in the neighborhood of ideal level,a firms, probability of R＆D investment increases,and after a certain point, as performance falls farther and farther below ideal situation, a firm^ probability of R＆D decreases.Second,the uncertainty of the industry environment plays a regulatory role between 44poverty^ and R＆D invest-ment, that is,under the same dilemma,with the increase of external environment uncertainty,R＆D investment is al-so increased. This can be explained in the following way. Because environmental uncertainty increases the operation-al pressure of the troubled enterprise and increases managers’ decision-making weight for future potential los-ses. According to the basic principles of the prospect theory, Kahneman ＆Tversky proposed that individuals are loss averse and, therefore, that framing a situation as a loss leads individuals to attempt to recover from the situation, pur-suing recovery through risk-seeking behavior that offers the possibility of reversing the loss the individuals have suf-fered. Therefore, the potential loss by uncertainty of the environment will strengthen ^poor^ firms R＆D investment.Thirdly,the institutional environment such as protection of property rights also plays a significant regulatory role. That means,the more perfect the protection of property rights is,the more R＆D investment “poor” firms will increase. This shows that the improvement of the external institutional environment provides a sense of security forthe 44 poor^ firms. When entrepreneurs feel safe, their confidence in continuous operations will also increase. At that situation, they are more likely and willing to allocate the resources to innovative activities.Above all,this paper gives 44poverty^ a richer meaning,which further enriched the theoretical framework of in-come-adventure. Meanwhile, this research also has certain practical significance for further understanding the reform mechanism of Chinese enterprise, such as how business executives should deal with the relationship between busi-ness difficulties and R＆D investment.