Research On The Relationships Among Negative Performance Feedback,Dynamic Resource Configuration And Enterprise Growth

With the deep division of labor in the global industry and the sharp change of the competition pattern,China's manufacturing industry and economy have entered a critical period of transformation,upgrading and high-quality development.As an important carrier of economic development,the enterprise's sustainable growth has become a strategic choice to promote economic transformation in China under such a realistic background.However,it is also an indisputable fact that enterprises have difficulties in survival and development,as well as having a short life cycle under the traditional extensive economic development mode in China.One of the important reasons for enterprises to fall into the growth dilemma is the limitation of enterprise resources and the unreasonable configuration of resources.In the new economy,how to rationally arrange and dynamically allocate the resource elements such as technology,marketing,knowledge,information and capital to achieve the best economic benefits has become an important problem to be solved urgently in enterprise practice of resource configuration.Although the existing studies on the effect of resource configuration on competitive advantage are widely discussed,they are often constrained by some objective factors from the perspective of industrial base,institutional base and resource-based view.The studies on how these objective factors are recognized and interpreted by enterprise managers and the internal mechanism that these factors stimulate the enterprises' decision-making behaviors and thus promote the enterprises' growth are relatively limited.The micro mechanism of how the negative performance feedback affects the enterprise's differentiated resource configuration decision-making behavior has not been broken through.Thus,it is necessary to expand and deepen the related theoretical and empirical research in combination with the problems faced by Chinese enterprises' growth and the practice of resource configuration.Therefore,this study focuses on the relationships among negative performance feedback,dynamic resource configuration and enterprise growth.Firstly,this study introduces enterprise's dynamic resource configuration as a typical problem searching behavior and divides it into six dimensions: research and development investment adjustment,marketing investment adjustment,nonproductive investment adjustment,inventory adjustment level,fixed assets updating and financial leverage.From the perspective of a behavioral theory of the firm,this study analyzes the effect of negative performance feedback on enterprise's dynamic resource configuration and its different dimensions.Secondly,this study investigates the moderating effects of internal and external situational conditions such as the power hierarchy of the board of directors and industrial munificence on the relationship between negative performance feedback and enterprise's dynamic resource configuration.Finally,the research framework from problem searching behavior to performance results is improved,and the impact of dynamic resource configuration driven by negative performance feedback on enterprise growth is further analyzed.In general,based on the combination of a behavioral theory of the firm,the related theory of resource configuration and the enterprise growth theory,this study investigates the formation and evolution of dynamic resource configuration.Based on the relevant literature review and analysis,this study constructs a holistic analysis framework on the relationship between negative performance feedback,dynamic resource configuration and enterprise growth.After completing the theoretical model and hypothesis reasoning,this research selects China's A-share manufacturing listed companies from 2007 to 2018 as the research samples to empirically test the hypotheses proposed in the research,which is pioneering to some extent in the existing empirical studies related to performance feedback and resource configuration.Through theoretical analysis and empirical test,this current study mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)Negative performance feedback has a significant impact on enterprise's dynamic resource configuration.Negative performance feedback is an important antecedent for enterprise's dynamic resource configuration,and there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between them.Furthermore,the negative performance feedback affects enterprise's dynamic resource configuration and thus forms different dimensional characteristics of the dynamic resource allocation.Specifically,negative performance feedback has significant and positive impacts on marketing investment adjustment and fixed assets updating,and has positive but not significant impacts on research and development investment adjustment and inventory adjustment level.In addition,there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between negative performance feedback and non-productive investment adjustment and financial leverage.(2)The formal power hierarchy,informal power hierarchy of the board of directors and industrial munificence play important roles in moderating the relationship between negative performance feedback and enterprise's dynamic resource configuration.Based on an inverted U-shaped relationship between negative performance feedback and enterprise's dynamic resource configuration,this study further found that this relationship is constrained by the formal power hierarchy,informal power hierarchy of the board of directors and industrial munificence.Specifically,the power hierarchy of the board of directors weakens the inverted U-shaped relationship through enhancing the psychological commitment of management decision and stimulating the group decision conflicts,while industrial munificence suppresses the inverted U-shaped relationship from the perspective of enhancing resource commitment suppresses.(3)Dynamic resource configuration driven by the negative performance feedback has a significant impact on enterprise growth.First,dynamic resource configuration has a significant and positive influence on enterprise's financial benefit.From the perspective of different dimensions of enterprise's dynamic resource configuration,this study found that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between research and development investment adjustment,marketing investment adjustment,nonproductive investment adjustment and enterprise's financial benefit,respectively,and both inventory adjustment level and fixed assets updating have significant and positive influences on enterprise's financial benefit,while the influence of financial leverage on enterprise's financial benefit is not significant.Secondly,there is a U-shaped relationship between dynamic resource configuration and enterprise's innovation output.Specifically,there is a U-shaped relationship between research and development investment adjustment,financial leverage and enterprise's innovation output,respectively,while nonproductive investment adjustment has a significant and negative impact on enterprise's innovation output.(4)The influences of different ownership types are different.The state-owned enterprises are more inclined to adjust their marketing investment when they are in a dilemma of performance decline,while nonstate-owned enterprises pay more attention to the adjustment of nonproductive investment when their performance is poor.However,compared with the significant positive relationship between the nonproductive investment adjustment and financial benefit in state-owned enterprises,there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between them in nonstate-owned enterprises.At the same time,there is a Ushaped relationship between research and development investment adjustment,fixed assets updating,financial leverage and innovation output in nonstate-owned enterprises.(5)The influences of different marketization degrees are different.The impact of negative performance feedback on marketing investment adjustment is higher in highmarketization regions than in low-marketization regions,while the impact on the nonproductive investment adjustment is lower in low-market regions.When enterprises in high-marketization regions are in a dilemma of negative performance,the possibility of adopting long-term resource configuration changes such as research and development investment adjustment,inventory adjustment level and fixed asset updating is much higher than that in low-marketization regions.In addition,there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between marketing investment adjustment,nonproductive investment adjustment and enterprise's financial benefit in high marketization regions,while both have significant and positive effects on enterprise' financial benefit in low marketization regions.Moreover,in the high-marketization region,there is a U-shaped relationship between research and development investment adjustment,fixed assets updating,financial leverage and enterprise's innovation output,respectively.The above research conclusions deepen the understanding of the relationship among negative performance feedback,dynamic resource configuration and enterprise growth,and further expand the existing research fields.The main contributions of this study are as follows:(1)This study responds to the logical framework of a behavioral theory of the firm and clarifies the antecedent mechanism of performance feedback on enterprise's dynamic resource configuration and its formation of various dimensions.From the perspective of a behavioral theory of the firm,this study emphasizes the subject initiative of the firm behavior subject under enterprise's negative performance feedback,which is conducive to in-depth understanding the micro mechanism of the generation of dynamic resource configuration.(2)This study promotes the research of enterprise's dynamic resource configuration from static analysis to dynamic evolution analysis,and considers the influences of internal and external situational factors,which expand the decision-making research in the field of traditional resource configuration.(3)This study constructs the theory model among negative performance feedback,dynamic resource configuration and enterprise growth,and improves the theoretical framework from problem searching behavior to performance results.In addition,this study expands the research boundary of traditional enterprise behavior theory,and provides theoretical reference for managers' decision-making under enterprise's negative performance feedback,especially in view of the decisions under different dimensions of dynamic resource configuration,and thus provides reference for enterprises' better growth.(4)This study analyzes the effects of negative performance feedback on dynamic resource configuration and thus the enterprise growth under different ownership types and marketization degrees,which is conducive to promoting research closer to the enterprise reality and enhancing the explanatory power and forecasting power of this research.This further analysis also enriches and develops the existing research in the fields of enterprise behavior and enterprise growth.