Uncertainty, Capabilities And Firm System And A Review On The Reform Of China's SOE

The study on the theory of the firm has just been unfolding in recent forty years. The research perspective covered many fields such as Economics, Management, Organizational Behavior, Law, and so on. And also, the research concerned some basic problems about firm theory including the nature and governance structure of the firm.The modern theory of the firm can be classified into two schools, that is, the contract theory and the capability theory. Although the theorists of the two schools have studied the production and transaction of the firm respectively, their theoretical system does not carry conviction because of the lack of logicality and consistency. Also, there still exist gaps which lead to the lack of effective communication between the two schools.Uncertainty means a situation when the objective probability about the occurrence of results cannot be calculated. And it is the incomplete knowledge that results in uncertainty. When the situation exists, what to do and how to do is the most important thing, that is, we should know how to cope with uncertainty rather than account cost and benefit only. In this paper, we promote the study on the some basic problems about firm by introducing uncertainty.The formation process of a firm is the formation process of entrepreneur. In this paper, we think that uncertainty implies not only the opportunity of benefit but the risk of loss, so, the firm is reaction mechanism of coping with uncertainty. There was no entrepreneur in the beginning original market. Some people who are sensitive to opportunity and are good at taking actions set up a firm. And those who set up firm are regarded as entrepreneur. Such, the appearance of firm and the emergence of entrepreneur is consistent logically and historically.The adaptive and control capability to deal with uncertainty is the decisive factors of the existence and the boundary of a firm. In this paper, On one hand, we think that the adaptive and control capability accessible to the firm is limited in a static situation, so that the scale expansion of firm is limited; and on the other hand, the capability is infinite in a dynamic situation owing to the development of technology, the increase of knowledge and the accumulation of management experience. Thus, in the long run, the boundary of firm is expanded constantly.The nature of the firm governance is to construct an organizational framework. Holding the opportunity and avoiding the risk under the condition of uncertainty. The firm must absorb all kinds of resources to cope with uncertainty and there must be collisions between the owners of these resources so that they need to construct an organizational framework to avoid the collision. Also, we think that it is the specialization of capability that determines the formation of the firms'functional departments and it is the standard of the capability that determines the formation of the firms'hierarchical structure.We must cope with uncertainty which will appear continuously so that enterprises can evolve constantly. We also think the content of uncertainty will change constantly with the development of market, technology and society, so we must regulate the firms'system and structure correspondingly, which shows the evolution of single enterprise, or the evolution of enterprises as a whole.We need the thought of uncertainty to carry out the reform of state-owned enterprises. In this paper we think that the root of problem existing in the reform of state-owned enterprises is lack of systematic thought of uncertainty. At present, the reform should be carried out from two levels, that is, we should focus on coping with the uncertainty of our country or society from the macroscopic perspective and focus on enhancing state-owned enterprises'adaptability to the market of from the microcosmic perspective.