企业数字化转型的同群效应

The Peer Effect of Enterprise Digital Transformation

在数字经济时代,企业数字化转型成为学术界关注的热点。聚焦企业数字化转型的同群效应,基于2007—2020年沪深A股上市公司数据进行实证研究,结果发现:第一,公司数字化转型存在显著行业同群效应,即同行业其它公司数字化转型能够显著推动该公司数字化转型。第二,企业信息环境和行业竞争是促进公司数字化转型同群效应产生的主要因素。第三,数字化转型的同群效应在男性CEO、高学历CEO企业,以及低金融科技发展水平地区企业更显著。第四,行业中追随者和领导者相互模仿,但追随者模仿领导者更多。进一步研究发现,模仿同行企业数字化转型的好处只在高数字化水平企业体现。结论不仅能够揭示中国上市公司数字化转型战略影响机理及经济后果,而且可为驱动企业数字化转型提供相关理论基础与经验借鉴。

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the shocks of geopolitical risks have brought great challenges to China's economic development.Technological innovation,the flow of production factors and the confidence of economic agents have also suffered.In order to boost the market vitality,digital transformation has become one of the value strategies for firms.Digital transformation can effectively reduce information asymmetry and optimize resource utilization and improve productivity;it helps to reduce operating risk and improve internal and external governance to reduce debt default risk and it promotes stakeholders'participation of business decisions,and strengthens the orientation of corporate social responsibility.With the popularity of digital transformation in enterprises,the research on digital transformation has been enriched gradually,covering the measurement of digital transformation and the economic consequences of digital transformation,such as enterprise value,enterprise risk and strategic decision.Although existing studies have confirmed the positive effects of digital transformation,little literature has explored the mutual influence of corporate digital transformation behavior.This paper proposes that the firms'decision-making behavior will influence each other,and the digital transformation of firms may be affected by the peer firms'digital transformation from the two following aspects.According to the information imitation theory,there are serious information asymmetry between firms and their stakeholders in an uncertainty environment.In order to reduce information costs,the firms are more likely to imitate the actions containing value information of other firms.Digital transformation,as a kind of value strategy,can effectively reduce the degree of information asymmetry between firms and investors,and improve the capital market performance.By imitating the digital transformation behavior of other firms,firms with low information transparency pass more information about firms'values to investors to reduce their information costs.In addition,firms with high information transparency can disclose more information about digital transformation,which provides the opportunity for firms with low information transparency.Thus,the firms with low information transparency are more likely to imitate peer digital transformation.According to the market competition theory,in order to maintain market position,the firms are willing to monitor and imitate the digital transformation of peer firms.In the industries with fierce competition,digital transformation can alleviate the difficulty in accessing finance,and reduce operating costs,and help firms obtain more cash flow,which will further intensify industry competition and lead to higher bankruptcy risks for firms.Thus the firms have a stronger incentive to emulate and learn from the digital transformation of their peers in order to obtain credit and reduce operating costs;then they can withstand predatory attacks from competitors and maintain existing market positions.In addition,for the industries with high degree of competition,firms usually implement the same strategy with their peers due to the cruel competitive elimination mechanism.However,the process of digital transformation needs a large amount of capital investment.Once the peers begin to implement digital transformation,firms will imitate and learn from their peers'digital transformation to reduce costs,hence the firms in highly competitive industries are more likely to imitate peer digital transformation.This study analyzes the peer effect of digital transformation between firms in the same industry.On the basis of the annual reports of A-share listed firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock markets,it uses Python to extract the frequency of words related to digital transformation and the frequency is used to measure the level of firms'digital transformation.Further,from the perspectives of CEO characteristics,firms'information environment and industry competition,it comprehensively expounds the mechanism of the peer effect in firms'digital transformation.It is found that the firms'digital transformation behavior has a significant peer effect;the information environment and the market competition is the main factor of digital transformation effect;the peer effect of digital transformation is stronger in the firm with male CEO or highly educated CEO,and located in low FinTech development regions;the followers and leaders in the same industry imitate each other,but followers imitate leaders more.Further studies show that only firms with high level of digitalization benefit by imitating the peers'digital transformation.This paper not only reveals the influence mechanism and economic consequences of the digital transformation of Chinese listed firms,but also provides relevant theoretical basis and empirical evidences for promoting the firms'digital transformation.