一切过往,皆为序章:管理者过往经历对企业决策影响的评述与展望

All the Past Is the Prologue:Review and Prospects of the Influence of Managers’Past Experience on Corporate Decision-Making

管理者过往经历是管理者在过去的亲身体验,尤其是敏感期的经历对管理者个人以及企业产生重要影响。本文梳理了管理者过往经历的内涵、分类以及相关测量,对基于高阶理论和烙印理论的管理者过往经历的相关文献展开回顾,阐述了管理者过往经历研究的理论基础,并进一步分析了管理者过往经历对个体的隐性特征及企业决策行为的影响。本研究发现,管理者的过往经历影响其价值观、心理特质和认知基础,产生多重甚至是相互矛盾的影响,而企业的决策行为是管理者形成的内在心理特征的外在表现。本研究系统梳理和总结了管理者过往经历的研究成果,有助于对管理者过往经历的深刻理解,为进一步开展与该主题相关的研究提供重要参考。

As a hot topic in the field of executives,the research of managers’past experience has received extensive attention from scholars.However,the current research is relatively scattered,lacking a systematic and comprehensive combing and comprehensive analysis.In order to fill this gap,this article focuses on the literature focused on managers’past experience,paying special attention to the internal psychology of managers and its influence on corporate decision-making.We comprehensively comb and thoroughly analyze and summarize the literature.In order to maximize the relevance and completeness of the literature,we search the upper echelons theory,the imprinting theory and key words,as well as the papers focused on the past experience.Based on the searched literature,this article first sorts out the connotation,classification and measurement of managers’past experience.Then,it reviews the relevant literature of managers’past experience based on the upper echelons theory and the imprinting theory.We combine the two theories to discuss the theoretical basis of managers’past experience research.After that,it further analyzes the influence of managers’past experience on individuals’recessive characteristics and corporate decisionmaking behavior.Our study finds that managers’past experience affects their values,psychological traits,and cognitive basis,producing multiple or even contradictory effects.We also find that corporate decision-making behavior is an external manifestation of managers’internal psychological characteristics.Our study makes several contributions:First,the research on managers’past experience is relatively scattered at present.We make a systematical review on the connotation,classification,measurement and theory of managers’past experience,and also deeply discuss the influence of managers’past experience on the managers themselves and their corporate decision-making.We present a comprehensive research framework of managers’past experiences.Second,scholars mainly use the upper echelons theory to carry out research on managers’past experience and its influence,and believe that managers’past experience will form managers’invisible psychological characteristics and externalize them into corporate decision-making.The imprinting theory has gradually gained the attention of scholars.It is used to further explain what period of experience has the most significant impact on managers,what the characteristics of the impact are,and what dynamic changes may occur in the future.Our study combines the development of the upper echelons theory and the imprinting theory to explain the mechanism of past experience,especially the impact on enterprise managers during the sensitive period.We provide a new perspective for better understanding the research of enterprise managers and enterprise decision-making behavior.Third,this study comprehensively combs the empirical results of managers’past experience on the management itself and the decision-making of the company where managers are located.It deeply analyzes the influence of managers’past experience on the values,cognitive basis and psychological characteristics of managers,and finds the multiple and complex impacts of past experience on the managers themselves.We analyze the underlying reasons why the same experience produces multiple results and even contradictory results,and point out possible opportunities or directions for future research in this field.