经营困境下的企业变革:“穷则思变”假说检验

Enterprises' Strategic Change under Operating Difficulties: Test of Hypothesis of “Poverty Leads to Change”

"穷则思变"的朴素思想告诫人们,在穷困状态下要通过"变通"的方法来改善处境,但穷困状态是否以及如何影响组织的变革行为仍旧是未解决的重要学术问题。本文对"穷"赋予了广泛的界定,将其细分为财务困境、期望落差、组织下滑三种情况。基于中国上市公司的数据进行分析,本文主要发现:财务困境与变革投入之间存在非线性的关系,即在财务亚健康的状态下企业更趋向于采取变革活动,但临近破产时企业的变革动力将逐渐减弱;期望落差状态下的企业具有持续变革的可能性,规避风险的刚性行为虽然由于对生存问题的关注而逐渐增强,但这只在一定程度上削弱而不是完全替代变革的作用,以至期望落差与变革投入之间存在一种边际递减的非线性关系;组织下滑降低了企业冒险变革的动力,但低度下滑状态下的边际变革的递减效应显著低于高度下滑状态下的变革递减效应;政治连带在穷困状态与变革行为之间起到一定的调节作用,即在临近破产及高度期望落差状态下它都将提高企业的变革投入程度。

The Chinese proverb ＂poverty gives rise to the desire for change when facing poor situation＂ means that people tend to resort to change while they face difficulties. However, whether and how the poor situation affects the organizational change is still an unsolved question. In this paper, we define ＂poor＂ from different dimensions and hold that there exist three kinds of poor-financial distress, aspiration gap and organizational decline. Based on the sample of Chinese listed companies, this paper gets the following conclusions. Financial distress has a nonlinear relationship with and organizational change, namely enterprises in financial sub-health state are more incline to change, but those being about to bankrupt have less motivation to change. While the enterprises are under aspiration loss, the possibility of continual change is higher. On that condition, risk-averse rigid behavior will gradually increase, which might weaken the effect of change, but it would not completely replace the role of the change. So aspiration loss has a nonlinear relationship with change with a diminishing marginal effect. Organization decline will reduce the motivation of change, while the diminishing marginal change effect is significantly lower in the companies that in lower organization decline state than that in the higher state. Political tie moderate the relationship between poor performance and change behavior, namely enterprises that are close to bankrupt will improve the input for change, while those under aspiration loss are more likely to be motivated to change.