绩效反馈与公司风险投资的行业选择

The Influence of Performance Feedback on Industry Choice of Corporate Venture Capital

公司风险投资(CVC)是大型成熟企业为了应对复杂变化的环境,通过投资活动做出的战略储备,而投资项目的行业选择决定了企业未来战略调整的潜在方向。本研究从企业自身的绩效反馈出发,认为正向和负向绩效期望差距将导致组织采用不同的CVC搜索方式——跨行业的探索式投资和同行业的利用式投资,且这一过程将受到组织内部研发水平和外部市场竞争程度的影响。本文以2008-2018年开展CVC活动的A股上市公司为样本,通过实证研究发现,组织所面临的绩效期望差距与使用探索式投资策略的倾向具有非线性关系。当组织未实现期望时,期望逆差与跨行业CVC占比呈先上升后下降的倒U型关系,而对于实际绩效达到期望值的企业而言,跨行业CVC占比则随着期望顺差的扩大呈先下降后上升的U型关系。同时,企业内部研发水平加剧了期望逆差和期望顺差与跨行业CVC之间的倒U型、U型关系,而对于处在市场竞争激烈环境中的组织,期望逆差与跨行业CVC之间的倒U型关系更为陡峭。

In recent years,an increasing number of established firms actively engage in corporate venture capital(CVC)activities,with the aim of withstanding shocks caused by disruptive innovations and adapting to environmental changes.CVC investment is of great importance to the survival and development of organizations,especially in the highly uncertain global economic environment.Based on the Behavioral Theory of the Firm,existing studies have found that performance feedback is an important driving force of CVC adoption.However,few of them further explore the investment direction of CVC.In fact,the industry choice of investment projects is a key strategic decision which determines corpo-rate investors’available directions of strategic change in the future.Based on corporate investor’s performance feedback,this research finds that negative and positive attainment discrepancy will lead to differ-ent CVC industry strategy-exploration in unfamiliar industry or exploitation in existing industry.And this process is affected by corporate investors’internal R&D and external market competition.Through the empirical analysis of Chinese public companies that carried out CVC activities from 2008 to 2018,this paper finds that the gap between actual performance and aspiration level has a nonlinear impact on corporate investor’s tendency to use exploratory investment strategy.When the organization’s performance is lower than its aspiration,the negative attain-ment discrepancy and the proportion of exploratory CVC shows an inverted U-shaped relationship.However,when the firm achieves expected performance,the positive attainment discrepancy has a U-shaped relationship with the proportion of exploratory CVC.Meanwhile,corporate investor’s internal R&D intensity will intensify the inverted U-shaped relationship between negative attainment discrepancy and exploratory CVC tendency,and the U-shaped relationship between positive attainment discrepancy and exploratory CVC tendency respectively.For the cor-porate investor in a highly competitive market environment,the inverted U-shaped relationship between negative attainment discrepancy and its tendency of conducting exploratory CVC is even steeper.This paper makes theoretical contributions in the following four aspects.First,this paper extends the Behavior Theory of the Firm by linking the performance feedback to the direction of organizational change.Based on the context of CVC,this paper discusses how positive and negative at-tainment discrepancy will influence the exploratory and exploitative search behavior of an organization.Empirical results indicates that both of them have a nonlinear impact on the corporate investor’s decision of resource allocation between exploratory and exploitative CVC investment.Second,existing CVC literature mainly focuses on the antecedents and results of CVC activities,while this paper enriches studies on investment strategies of CVC.Third,existing studies considered CVC strategy as a long-term and stable strategic choice.However,this research shows that the corporate investor’s industry choice will change with the attainment discrepancy.It will also adjust accordingly with the change of internal R&D intensity and external market environment.Fourth,this study integrates the corporate investor’s internal R&D and external market envi-ronment into the performance feedback model,which helps us to have a deeper understanding of how organizational search behavior interacts with the complex internal and external environment.While most existing studies focus on the single behavioral consequence of performance feedback,this paper considers two types of search behavior at a time-both internal R&D and external CVC activity.And it is found that internal R&D intensity will affect the corporate investor’s understanding of the importance of CVC investment under different performance feedback scenarios.Besides,as the key feature of an organization’s external environment,the degree of market competition will determine the allocation of decision-maker’s attention within and outside the industry,thus influencing the industry choice of CVC activities.