环境不确定性会影响企业劳动投资效率吗?

Does Environmental Uncertainty Affect the Labor Investment Efficiency?

劳动力资本在微观企业竞争力塑造与宏观经济要素资源配置中发挥着重要作用。基于2007—2017年我国A股非金融行业上市公司的相关数据,本文对环境不确定性与企业劳动投资效率之间关系展开了探讨。研究发现,环境不确定性会抑制企业劳动投资效率,且代理问题与管理者能力是环境不确定性作用于企业劳动投资效率的主要路径。进一步检验发现,行业竞争地位较低、融资约束较为严重的企业劳动投资效率受到外部环境不确定性的影响更为明显;相较于加剧劳动投资过度,环境不确定性抑制劳动投资不足的效应更为显著;而在不同的劳动密集度下,环境不确定性影响劳动投资效率的效果并无显著差异。研究结论可以为增强企业应对环境波动能力、提高劳动投资效率、优化要素市场配置体制机制等提供有益的政策建议。

Labor investment efficiency is not only an important content related to the effectiveness of resource allocation in macroeconomic development,but also the core factor directly related to the enterprise's ability to create value.As one of the most important decision-making and influencing factors in the whole process of production and operation,maintaining an optimal level of labor investment is of great significance for improving the efficiency of resource allocation and maintaining continuity and stability of growth.The resource theory proposes that environment is the basic condition for enterprises to survive.Meanwhile,environment also restricts its operation,thus enterprises and managers need to make different business strategies and operational decisions according to the environmental differences.Especially the micro-environment which is directly related to the production and operation of enterprises has a more obvious impact on the allocation of enterprise resources.Specifically,the impact of environmental uncertainty on the labor investment efficiency of enterprises may include the following aspects.First,environmental uncertainty magnifies the agency problem of managers in labor investment decisions.On the one hand,the uncertainty of the environment increases the difficulty in the evaluation of the company's business performance,making it more difficult for stakeholders to effectively supervise and judge the investment decisions of the company,which creates opportunities for managers to be lazy and on-the-job consumption,and leads to investment deviation from the optimal level.On the other hand,the increased environmental uncertainty of enterprises not only brings more opportunities for the managers to seek selfish interests,but also makes them face more pressure to achieve the expected performance targets,which is more likely to trigger various opportunistic behaviors.Second,environmental uncertainty weakens managers'ability to make effective decisions based on information.As an important component of factor allocation,the effectiveness of labor investment is also affected by decisions made by managers based on the environment.When the environment is uncertain and it is difficult to obtain reliable information to make decisions,the decision-making ability of managers is weakened,and labor investment of enterprises is likely to deviate from the optimal level,leading to inefficient investment results.Different from other expenditures,labor investment has obvious characteristics of liquidity and reversibility,so managers have greater discretion in making employment-related decisions.As a key and easily manipulated element in the investment project,in this context,labor investment efficiency will be more likely to become a tool for managers to exercise opportunistic behavior,thus making the enterprise labor investment efficiency deviate from the optimal level.Therefore,this paper puts forward the hypothesis:the higher the environmental uncertainty,the lower the labor investment efficiency of the enterprise.Based on the data of China's A-share non-financial listed companies from 2007 to 2017,this paper finds that environmental uncertainty reduces firm's labor investment efficiency,and the agency problem and manager ability are the main mechanism.Furthermore,the impact of environmental uncertainty on the labor investment efficiency is mainly reflected in the aggravation of labor investment shortage.The labor investment efficiency of enterprises with low competitive position and severe financing constraint is more obviously affected by environment uncertainty.However,for companies with different labor intensity,there is no significant difference in the impact of environmental uncertainty on labor investment efficiency.The findings of this paper can provide beneficial policy suggestions for enhancing the ability of enterprises to cope with environmental fluctuations,improving the efficiency of labor investment and optimizing the system and mechanism of factor market allocation.