“诚信”文化与企业创新

Integrity culture and corporate innovation

本文采用文本分析有效识别"诚信"导向的企业文化数据,以2007-2015年沪深A股上市公司样本实证分析"诚信"文化与企业创新的关系,并进一步从微观的公司特征层面与宏观的制度环境层面检验了此影响的差异性。实证结果表明:视"诚信"为首要文化的企业,专利申请数量更多,创新能力更强;进一步的研究发现,"诚信"文化对于企业创新的"驱动"影响在国有企业、两职合一的企业以及制度环境较差地区的企业作用更显著。本文从普适性的企业文化视角对影响企业创新的作用情境进行了解释,为企业文化影响企业绩效领域的研究提供了新的经验证据。

Corporate culture has great influence on corporate performance. On the one hand, corporate culture can shape the driving force of the company. According to the Enterprise Resource Theory, the heterogeneous resources owned or controlled by enterprises, which are valuable, scarce and difficult to be imitated and replaced, determine the competitive advantage and sustainable development of enterprises. Corporate culture is heterogeneous resource which is unique and hard to be imitated and copied within the enterprise, which is the core "driving force" of enterprise development;on the other hand, corporate culture shapes corporate cohesion. Corporate culture is the "soul" in the development of enterprises. As a soft system constraint, corporate culture can improve corporate performance by directly influencing the values and behavior of organizational employees and reduce the coordination cost of management strategy. Enterprise performance is an output of quality and efficiency, which has a multi-dimensional structure, covering short-term profitability, market value, innovation ability and international market performance. The innovative behavior of enterprises is endogenous from the institutional environment. Look through the previous literatures, we can find that most of experts pay more attention to the impact of formal system(such as legal system, marketization process, government regulation, etc.), while the impact of informal system, such as culture and religion, on enterprise innovation is less studied. As for China, which is in the transition period, the formal system is becoming more and more perfect but is still lacking. It may has more practical significances to study the innovation of enterprises from the perspective of informal system. "Integrity" culture as the core of corporate culture is the foundation of enterprise management, which helps to attract investment, reduce transaction costs, improve operation efficiency, and thereby improve enterprise performance. However, throughout the existing research results,we can find that there is no corresponding empirical evidence to support the view that "Integrity"-oriented corporate culture can promote the improvement of corporate innovation capabilities.In view of this, this paper attempts to examine the effect of "integrity" culture on corporate innovation, and then provides empirical evidence from another dimension for the influence of corporate culture on enterprise performance. Firstly, the "integrity" culture has positive externalities. As a kind of signal transmission, "integrity" culture can reduce information asymmetry and moral hazard in market transactions, and effectively improve the business credit level of enterprises. At the same time, "honest" enterprises have higher credit ratings, are easier to obtain bank loans, and are more favored by capital market investors, all of which help enterprises obtain financing facilities and alleviate the shortage of funds in the research and development process. Secondly, the culture of "integrity" affects corporate behavior. On the one hand, "integrity" culture has the function of behavior guidance and restraint. "Integrity", as an internalized code of conduct for enterprises, opposes the selfish opportunistic behavior, which will reduce the self-interested motivation of enterprise managers and help alleviate agency problems in innovation activities. On the other hand, the value culture with "integrity" as the core can enhance enterprises′ sense of social responsibility, drive enterprises to be willing to invest more in technology, research and development, and enhance their awareness of independent innovation. Finally, the psychological view holds that positive emotional experiences promote individual behavior. In the positive emotional atmosphere shaped by the "integrity" culture, enterprise R&D personnel are more active in their innovative thinking, and at the same time, they can better contribute to the implementation of innovation and promote enterprise innovation.This paper holds that enterprises that emphasize "integrity" culture have stronger innovation ability. Furthermore, from the perspective of institutional background, under the guidance and edification of Confucianism for thousands of years in China, the informal system has been highly praised, especially still in the emerging stage of imperfect formulation and implementation of the formal system in China, where the status of the informal system is more important. Therefore, when the enterprise is in the adverse situation, that is, when the formal system is in a poor environment, the role of the informal system such as culture will be more prominent, or there is an alternative role for the formal system. At the micro level, the difference of the nature of the enterprise and the governance structure may lead to the heterogeneity of the influence of the "integrity" culture on the innovation of the enterprise. For this reason,this paper effectively identifies the integrity-oriented corporate culture data through the text analysis approach and empirically analyzes the relationship between integrity culture and corporate innovation using a sample of A-share listed firms at Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2007 to 2015. And we further examine the difference of this influence from the perspective of the micro-level corporate characteristics and macro-level institutional environment. The empirical results show that firms that treat "integrity" as their primary culture have more patent applications and stronger innovation ability;further study finds that the "drive" effects of "integrity" culture on corporate innovation are stronger for state-owned enterprises, firms whose board chairman also serves as a CEO, and firms that are located in poor-institution areas.The research contributions of this paper are as follows: First, by examining the influence of "integrity" culture on the innovation ability of enterprises, this paper enriches the literature of the antecedent fields of R&D and innovation, and expands the understanding of the economic consequences of corporate culture;Second,by examining the regulatory role of macro environmental factors and micro enterprise characteristics in enterprise management, the paper can make people have a deeper understanding of the effect of corporate culture on corporate performance;Third, under the current predicament of the lack of endogenous power development of China′s real economy, this paper explains the promotion path of Chinese enterprises′ innovation ability from the perspective of universal culture, which has important practical value.