裁员会提升企业全要素生产率吗?——来自世界银行调查问卷的证据

Can Downsizing Improve Enterprises’Total Factor Productivity?-Evidence from the World Bank Enterprise Survey

裁员是企业常见的战略调整手段之一,裁员如何影响企业绩效在学术界一直存在争议。利用世界银行中国调查问卷,重点探讨裁员对企业全要素生产率的影响。裁员会显著降低企业全要素生产率,这一结论通过了相关稳健性检验。机制探讨发现,裁员会通过加剧幸存员工的工作强度从而对企业全要素生产率产生负面影响;而企业的融资约束状况能够有效调节裁员对企业全要素生产率的不利影响,企业面临的融资约束越低,越能缓解裁员对企业全要素生产率的负面影响。异质性分析发现,正式工、非国有企业、中小微型企业以及资本密集型企业的裁员会对企业全要素生产率产生更多负面影响。

Downsizing is a common method for enterprises to make strategical adjustments,but there has long been disputes on how it influences enterprises’productivity.This paper mainly focuses on exploring the influence of downsizing on enterprises’total factor productivity(TFP)by using the World Bank Enterprise Survey in China.The results show that downsizing significantly reduces enterprises’TFP and a series of robustness tests support the findings.Further,the mechanism analysis finds that downsizing could aggravate the work intensity of survivors and thus exert negative impacts on enterprises’TFP.Besides,downsizing firms that face less financial constraints suffer less negative impacts by downsizing.Heterogeneity analyses provide evidence that downsizing permanent workers,and downsizing from state-owned enterprises,small and medium-sized enterprises,as well as capital-intensive enterprises all have more negative effects on enterprises’TFP.The findings of this paper enrich the existed researches on downsizing,providing practical instructions for enterprises to take measures targeting to reduce potential negative effects by downsizing.