数字化转型与企业成长:理论逻辑与中国实践

Digital Transformation and Enterprise Growth:Logic and Practice of China’s Capital Market

数字化转型关乎企业成长,也关乎中国产业数字化的成败。本文以2007—2018年A股上市企业为样本,利用文本分析技术提取年报中数字化关键词,研究数字化转型对企业成长的影响及其作用机制。研究结果表明,数字化转型能够促进企业成长,并且数字化转型对头部企业成长的促进作用更大。具体来说,数字化转型对80%分位点企业的影响是20%分位点企业的3.67倍,一系列稳健性检验均证实了上述结论。异质性分析发现:(1)现阶段数字化转型在国有企业中的效果优于非国有企业,这可能是得益于国有企业为地方政府承担"政策性负担"而获得了额外的资源倾斜;(2)数字化转型具有显著的"同群效应",当同城市同行业内有多家企业实施数字化转型时,数字化转型促进企业成长的效果会更好;(3)在制造业中,数字化转型对企业成长影响显著,而在服务业中则没有捕捉到显著影响。进一步分析发现,提高劳动效率和降低营业成本是数字化转型促进企业成长的主要中介机制,在总效应中分别占24%和18%。本文的研究结论为探索数字化转型对企业成长的影响提供了重要的政策启示。

Digital transformation is not only crucial to the growth of enterprises,but also to the success of industrial digitalization in China.This paper takes A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2018 as samples,uses text analysis technology to extract digital keywords from annual reports,studies the impact and heterogeneity of digital transformation on enterprise growth,and quantifies the relative contributions of four mechanisms.Findings are as follows:Firstly,the benchmark result shows that digital transformation can promote the growth of enterprises.A series of robustness tests in which the explained variables are replaced,the combined fixed effect of“time×industry”is adopted,the effects of financial crisis and stock market crash are proposed,enterprises registered in municipality are excluded,and the one-to-one correspondence between explained variables and explanatory variables is disrupted.All confirmed the conclusion that digital transformation can promote the growth of enterprises.For possible causal endogenous between firm growth and digital transition,on the one hand,we make the variable lag one period adding the regression model,on the other hand,we make digital transformation index of the industry average as the instrumental variable of individual enterprise,the results still show that digital transformation is advantageous to the enterprise growth.Secondly,in the heterogeneity analysis part,we find that digital transformation has a significant effect on promoting the growth of enterprises in the manufacturing industry;However,in the service industry,no significant influence is detected.This may be because digital technology originated in the field of information and communication science and could be deeply integrated with the industrial production process,so that digital technology is firstly promoted in the manufacturing industry.The effect of digital transformation on the growth of service enterprises may require more stringent conditions,more perfect terminal digital products,and a longer working time.In addition,digitalization has a greater promoting effect on the growth of top enterprises.Specifically,the impact of digital transformation on the growth of 80 percent of enterprises is 3.67 times that of 20%percent enterprises.Thirdly,this paper also examines the mediating role of“cost reduction”,“efficiency improvement”,“internal control”and“off-site investment”in the process of digital transformation to promote enterprise growth,and finds that“cost reduction”and“efficiency improvement”are the main mechanisms,contributing 24%and 18%of the total effect,respectively.“Internal control”and“off-site investment”are secondary mediating effects,accounting for 7%and 6%of the total effect,respectively.Digital transformation is a key decision related to the survival of enterprises,which is of great significance for coping with the short-term impact of COVID-19 and for sustainable development in the future.Therefore,enterprises need to pay attention to digital transformation and upgrading.At the same time,digital transformation is a long and gradual process,and there are obvious differences in the focus and path of digital transformation between manufacturing and service industries,top enterprises and small enterprises.There is no standard answer to digital transformation.Enterprises should start from their own needs and pain points,and find a digital transformation plan suitable for their maturity and development strategy according to their industry characteristics and business development stage.At the present stage,digital transformation has a better effect on the leading enterprises than the tail enterprises in the industry,and digital transformation has a spillover effect.This suggests that the subsidy policies of government departments can give priority to supporting a group of leading enterprises with good foundation and strong strength to actively adopt the new generation of information technology,explore the new mode of intelligent manufacturing,and summarize the experience of digital transformation.Then,the spillover effect generated by these enterprises can provide reference for other enterprises in the same city or the same industry,so as to promote the overall process of digital transformation of enterprises in the jurisdiction.