Research On The Political Capabilities Of Corporate Senior Leaders In Chinese Context And Its Impact On Corporate Performance

At present,with the deepening of China's “Belt and Road” and the integration of world's political economy,enterprises need to face increasingly fierce political competition in addition to market competition.The US ban on ZTE and the security incidents of Huawei and ZTE all reflect the significant impact of political environment and government and other stakeholders on corporate development.The foreign multinational companies' special emphasis on government and business relations when entering the Chinese market also reflects the key role of the national political environment in the success of the business,and this role is particularly prominent in China's current economic transformation background and relationship-led social structure.Therefore,the senior leaders who are the main body of corporate decision-making need not only the ability to compete in the market,but also the strong political capability to effectively respond to the political environment and the requirements of the government and other stakeholders,handle the relationship with them,and promote the development of the company in the right and sustainable direction.Under the background of China's transitional economy,This study takes the "corporate top leaders' political capability and its role" as the main line,and focuses on the question of how to effectively respond to the political environment and its government-centered stakeholders,trying to construct a theoretical system of corporate top leaders' political capability and its utility from the perspective of upper echelons theory,social network theory and institutional theory.It focuses on the structure,measurement and mechanism of political capability of senior leaders.Through systematically combing the relevant literature on political capability in the enterprise context,this paper finds that the existing research mainly focuses on the field of corporate strategic management,but it is still in its infancy,and there are many similar concept confusions,fuzzy operational definition of variables,and insufficient quantitative research.The research progress is relatively slow.To this end,this paper focuses on the main line,using social network analysis,grounded theory and quantitative empirical research,and conducts research according to the following ideas: First,define the research boundary,clarify the conceptual connotation of the senior leaders' political capability;Second,develop the structure dimension and measurement tools,based on the Chinese background,explain the structure of top leaders' political capability of enterprises and develop effective measurement scales;Finally,construct the mechanism of action,based on the previous research of this paper,empirically analysis and demonstrate the mechanism of the influence of senior leaders' political ability on corporate performance.The above research has mainly achieved the following research results:Firstly,the research on the conceptual connotation of the senior leaders' political ability through literature review and social network analysis find that,the complete political ability in the context of the enterprise does not exist independently at one level of the individual or organization,but at two levels at the same time.At the individual level,political capability is expressed as the individual ability of the top leaders of the enterprise.At the organizational level,the political ability is expressed as the collective ability of the senior leaders team of the enterprise,and can be institutionalized or programmed into organizational capabilities.Based on this,the senior leaders' political capability of the enterprise is defined as: a kind of capability possessed by the corporate senior leaders and their leading teams,which based on the enterprise conditions and the external environment,through the development of political and business relations and the allocation of political resources,predict,adapt and influence the political environment of enterprises to prevent and control policy risks,gain competitive advantage and improve the performance of enterprises.Secondly,using the grounded theory to construct the structural dimension and function model of the senior leaders' political capability,and develop its measurement scale according to the psychometric scale development program.The study finds that the political capability of corporate senior leaders is composed of political strategic thinking capability,policy environment control capability,network relations development capability,social image management capability and organizational construction capability.The senior leaders' political capabilities play a role through macro,organizational and individual levels,and ultimately affect the performance and development of the enterprise.The results of this study are consistent with the logical view of "high-level leadership capabilities-enterprise behavior or competitive advantage-enterprise performance and development" in upper echelon theory and strategic leadership theory.In addition,the corporate top leaders' political capacity scale includes 15 items in 5 dimensions,which have high reliability and validity,and can effectively predict the government support and competitiveness of enterprises.Thirdly,through questionnaire survey and quantitative data analysis,based on social network theory and organizational system theory,the mechanism of the influence of senior leaders' political capability on corporate performance is constructed.The study found that the corporate senior leaders' political capability can positively predict the short-term performance and long-term performance of the enterprise,and the organizational legitimacy of the enterprise has a partial intermediary role between the top leaders' political ability and the long-term performance of the enterprise,and have a full intermediary role between the top leaders' political ability and corporate short-term performance.The network centrality of an enterprise cannot play an intermediary role independently.It needs to play a partial chain-based intermediary role between the senior leaders' political capability and the long-term performance of the enterprise together with the organizational legitimacy,and play a full chain-based intermediary role between the senior leaders' political capability and the short-term performance of the enterprise.At the same time,the top leaders' political capability of the company can also positively predict the network centrality and organizational legitimacy of the enterprise,and the environmental hostility faced by the enterprise has a negative regulation effect between the corporate top leaders' political capability and the enterprise network centrality,as well as the political capacity of senior leaders and the organizational legitimacy.It is further manifested as a regulated intermediary: the interaction between environmental hostility and the political ability of the top leadership of the enterprise is intermediated through the network centrality and organizational legitimacy of the enterprise,affecting the short-term performance and long-term performance of the enterprise.It is further manifested as a moderated mediator: the interaction between environmental hostility and the corporate top leaders' political capability is mediated by the network centrality and organizational legitimacy of the enterprise,which affects the short-term performance and longterm performance of the enterprise.This research has important theoretical contributions and practical significance.In theory,(1)combined with upper-echelons theory and resource-dependence theory,it defines and enriches the concept and connotation of the corporate senior leaders' political capability,and delineates the research boundary for the follow-up enterprise's senior leaders' political capability research.(2)Based on the Chinese background,It builds the structural dimension of senior leaders' political capability and provides a new perspective for the study of senior leadership.(3)Based on upper-echelons theory and strategic-leadership theory,it constructs the theoretical framework of the influence of top leaders' political capability on many levels,makes up for the shortcomings of existing political capacity research,and provides a systematic theoretical framework for the subsequent study of senior leaders' political capability.(4)From the perspective of organizational management,it develops an effective measurement scale of corporate high-level leaders' political capability and provides an effective measurement tool for subsequent empirical research in this direction.(5)It introduces social network theory and organizational system theory into the study of the utility of corporate top leaders' political capability,and opens a new perspective for explaining how the senior leaders' political capability of enterprises can enhance their economic benefits through the construction of competitive advantages,which lays a theoretical foundation for the subsequent utility research.(6)It clarifies the boundary conditions of the senior leaders' political capability of enterprises affecting the competitive advantage and economic benefits of the enterprise,enriching and enhancing the contextual characteristics of the relationship between them.In practice,(1)it will help to raise the awareness of senior leaders of the company on their political capability and its impact,and to rational use and effective play an active role of their political capability.(2)It will help enterprises to pay attention to the cultivation of political capabilities in all aspects of senior leaders,and in combination with the specific problems faced by enterprises,targeted use of some or comprehensive political capabilities to help enterprises effectively respond to changes in policy situations.(3)When improving the economic benefits of enterprises,we must not only pay attention to non-market capabilities,but also pay attention to the network centrality and the organizational legitimacy.(4)It will help the public and the government to have a reasonable understanding of the corporate top leaders' political capabilities,and be able to formulate appropriate institutional norms,guide and constrain enterprises and their senior leaders to effectively use political capabilities and implement political behaviors,and let the corrupt behaviors such as power trading lose the breeding ground.In summary,this paper deeply analyzes the concept and composition of the corporate senior leaders' s political capability,and reveals its important role in the long-term performance and short-term performance of the enterprise.It shifts the company's view of how to improve its economic efficiency from focusing on market ability to focusing on non-market ability,deepening the enterprise's understanding of enterprises on improving the economic efficiency of enterprises by cultivating and shaping the political ability of senior leaders.This is an important response to the question of how to deal with the political environment and its governmentcentered stakeholders in the context of China's transitional economy.