绩效下跌、管理者能力与企业专利战略:对专利数量和质量之间张力的分析

Performance shortfall,managerial ability and firms′patenting strategy:An analysis of the tension between quantity and quality

企业行为理论研究在绩效下跌(即绩效低于绩效标杆)与各类组织变革之间建立了理论联系。然而,绩效下跌的影响如何,不仅取决于组织变革本身的性质,还取决于决策者对绩效下跌的解读。本研究聚焦于企业专利申请数量和专利申请质量这两种具有内在张力的企业行为,探讨了管理者能力将如何调节这两种行为的绩效反馈过程。管理者能力的调节效应源于能力水平不同的决策者对绩效下跌的解读也不同。基于中国制造业上市公司2011年—2017年的数据,本研究发现绩效下跌与专利申请数量之间存在负向关系,使得绩效越低于绩效标杆,专利申请数量也越低,而管理者能力将削弱这一负向关系;绩效下跌与专利申请质量之间存在正向关系,使得绩效越低于绩效标杆,专利申请质量也越高,而管理者能力将增强这一正向关系。

The behavioral theory of the firm is an important fundamental theory in the management domain.It describes the strategic decision-making process of a firm as a performance feedback process and argues that performance shortfall,i.e.,firms′failing to achieve their aspirations,would make decision makers launch problemistic search to seek solutions to settling the problem of performance shortfall,consequently leading to organizational changes.Previous studies have established theoretical relationship between performance shortfalls and various kinds of organizational changes.However,no consensus has been reached about the effect of performance shortfalls.On one hand,many studies support the classic predictions of the behavioral theory of the firm and it′s found that performance shortfalls would lead to organizational changes of the firm.On the other hand,some studies indicate contrary evidence that performance shortfalls would reduce firms′tendency to make organizational changes.This study holds that the way a firm responds to performance shortfall depends on decision makers′interpretation of performance shortfall and on the characteristics of that organizational change.To make up for the research gap described above,this study incorporates managerial ability into the behavioral theory of the firm and focuses on the quantity and the quality of firms′patent applications with inherent tension.Specifically,this study examines how performance shortfall influences firms′patenting strategies involving the quantity and the quality of patent applications and how managerial ability moderates the relationships between performance shortfall and patenting strategies.This study investigates managerial ability,because it would influence the performance feedback process of the two patenting strategies by altering decision makers′interpretation of performance shortfalls.This study focuses on firms′patenting strategies for the following reasons.First,patenting strategies are common and important strategies for manufacturing firms to respond to performance shortfalls.Second,there is often a tension between the quantity and the quality of patent applications;therefore,decision makers have to weigh up those two options.Investigating the performance feedback processes of them may reveal the different effects of performance shortfall on organizational changes.This study uses a sample of Chinese A-share manufacturing listed firms in the period of 2011—2017.The data used in this study are from the China Stock Market&Accounting Research Database(CSMAR)and Wind Database(WIND),which have been widely employed in empirical studies on Chinese firms.To alleviate the potential effect of outliers,this study winsorizes variables with possible outliers at the 1st and 99th percentiles of their distributions.This study employs fixed effect models for panel data to test hypotheses.Fixed effect models can solve the problem that the explanatory variables are correlated with unobserved individual effects.This study uses Driscoll-Kraay standard errors to correct the problems of heteroscedasticity and serial correlation.The measurement of the quantity of patent applications is natural logarithm for the total number of patent applications of a firm.The quality of patent applications is measured as the ratio of the number of invention patent applications to the total number of patent applications.Performance shortfall means performance falls below the aspiration level.This study uses return on assets(ROA)to measure firm performance and focuses on social aspiration.Social aspiration is the average performance of all the other firms in focal firm′s industry.This study uses two-step data envelopment analysis(DEA)to obtain the measurement of managerial ability.As to control variables,this study controls R&D intensity,marketing intensity,unabsorbed slack resources,firm size,income tax ratio,the independence of the board,the size of top management team,ownership concentration,proportion of state-owned shares,positive performance discrepancy,industry dummy variables,and year dummy variables.This study suggests that there is a negative relationship between performance shortfalls and the quantity of patent applications so that the more the performance falls short of the performance aspiration,the smaller the quantity of patent applications would be.In addition,managerial ability would undermine this negative relationship.Moreover,there is a positive relationship between performance shortfalls and the quality of patent applications so that the more the performance falls below the performance aspiration,the higher the quality of patent applications would be,and managerial ability would strengthen this positive relationship.