Performance Expectation Gap And Enterprise R&D

R&D is vital to sustained economic growth and is also an important engine for improving the quality and efficiency of economic development.As the backbone of R&D,the improvement of R&D capability of enterprises is the key guarantee of national R&D quality and efficiency.The improvement of research and development capabilities can not only help companies gain competitive advantages and increase corporate value,but also the fundamental driving force for corporate development.In order to increase the enthusiasm of enterprises for research and development,the Chinese government has increased financial support for technological innovation and provided a series of policy preferences.With such a strong government support,the number of patent applications in my country has also increased,and it has become the country with the largest number of patent applications in the world.However,according to the ranking of the Global Innovation Index 2020 released by the World Intellectual Property Organization,there is still a certain gap between the quality of innovation in my country and developed countries.Relevant research shows that under the encouragement of industrial policies,many enterprises have unilaterally pursued "quantity" while ignoring "quality".A few low-quality companies even use R&D manipulation to defraud the government’s policy preferences.How to inspire companies to increase R&D investment while ensuring R&D quality and reducing R&D manipulation? This is an issue that urgently needs to be studied in the process of high-quality economic development of our country.In reality,corporate R&D activities will be affected by their own business performance.The theory of corporate behavior believes that organizations will formulate follow-up strategic behaviors based on their own performance evaluation.According to the gap between the actual performance of the enterprise and the expected performance level,it can be divided into negative performance feedback and positive performance feedback.Under different operating conditions,the strategic choices adopted in decision-making may be completely different.Due to the differences in the characteristics of the enterprise itself and the internal and external environments in which it is located,even if the gap is the same,enterprise R&D will be different.Whereas previous studies were mostly based on the status of Western developed countries,there were relatively few studies based on China.At the same time,in the mechanism analysis,there is a high degree of attention to the analysis of internal factors of the enterprise,ignoring the impact of external environmental factors on R&D activities.Based on this,this article takes China in a transitional period as the research background,focuses on R&D investment,R&D efficiency,and R&D manipulation,and studies the following issues:(1)How does the negative performance feedback affect corporate R&D investment? What factors affect the relationship between negative feedback and R&D investment? In a state of positive feedback,are there differences in R&D investment among enterprises?(2)What is the R&D efficiency of the enterprise under the expected gap? What factors affect the relationship between negative feedback and R&D efficiency? Does the R&D efficiency of companies with positive differ?(3)When companies have negative feedback,do they prefer R&D manipulation or restrain R&D manipulation? Does R&D manipulation also have an important impact on R&D efficiency? What is the relationship between positive feedback and R&D manipulation?This article is based on corporate behavior theory and prospect theory,combined with resource-based theory,high-level echelon theory and cognitive bias theory.Taking 2010-2019 Chinese A-share listed companies as the research object,it focuses on the theme of "performance expectation gap and corporate R&D activities".This article separately studies the impact of performance expectation gap on R&D investment,the impact of performance expectation gap on R&D efficiency,and the impact of performance expectation gap on R&D manipulation.The full text is mainly divided into seven chapters,the main contents are summarized as follows:Chapter Ⅰ: Introduction.This chapter analyzes the research background,clarifies the research theme,and proposes the significance of the research.It also displays the research ideas,research methods and research content of the full text,and explains possible innovations.Chapter Ⅱ: literature review.Through a comprehensive review of domestic and foreign literature on performance expectation gap and enterprise R&D,we find the shortcomings of the existing research and get the research enlightenment.Chapter Ⅲ: Theoretical basis.This chapter elaborates on the theoretical basis involved in the full text,and analyzes its supporting role for the gap in research performance expectations and corporate R&D.Chapter Ⅳ: The chapter studies the gap in performance expectations and R&D investment of listed companies in my country.On the basis of relevant theoretical analysis,this chapter puts forward the main hypothesis of negative feedback and R&D investment,and believes that the relationship between them is affected by internal and external factors of enterprises,thus constructs three different levels of scenarios: macro(business cycle)-meso(industry competition)-micro(enterprise’s own resources and decision-maker characteristics),and analyzes how these factors affect the R&D investment.The research results show that negative feedback can trigger corporate change motivation and increase R&D investment,and this promotion is more significant during economic prosperity,high industry competition,slack resources,and high CEO openness.This article further analyzes the impact of corporate profitability and life cycle on the relationship between negative feedback and R&D investment.The results show that when the company is profitable,the impact of negative feedback on R&D investment has not changed;but when the company is losing money,there is no significant promotion relationship between the two.When the life cycle of an enterprise is in the mature period,the promotion relationship between the above two is significant;but in the other three stages of the life cycle,the promotion relationship between the two is not significant.This paper further studies the R&D investment under positive feedback,and finds that positive feedback has a significant inhibitory effect on R&D investment.And through group testing,it is found that higher positive feedback and high-tech enterprises can weaken the inhibitory effect of expected surplus on R&D investment.Chapter Ⅴ: The chapter mainly studies the gap in performance expectations and R&D efficiency of listed companies in China.On the basis of relevant theoretical analysis,this chapter puts forward the main hypothesis of negative feedback and R&D efficiency,and believes that this relationship will be adjusted by the institutional environment,the nature of property rights and the power of the CEO.This paper uses the DEA model to measure the R&D efficiency of enterprises,and the research finds that with the expansion of the performance gap,the more serious the decline in corporate performance,the more efficient use of limited resources to improve R&D efficiency while increasing R&D investment.At the same time,this promotion relationship is more significant when the institutional environment is good,the property right is a private enterprise,and the CEO has greater power.This chapter further studies the impact of positive feedback on R&D efficiency,and finds that with the expansion of positive feedback,R&D efficiency also increases.When the environmental system is better,the CEO’s power is greater,and the nature of property rights does not have a significant impact on it,this promotion effect is more significant.Chapter Ⅵ: This chapter studies the performance expectation gap and R&D manipulation of Chinese listed companies.Based on the institutional background and theoretical analysis,this article believes that while companies with negative feedback have R&D manipulation motives,they also have the possibility of restraining R&D manipulation.Therefore,two opposing hypotheses are proposed.Through empirical research,it is found that although R&D manipulation can bring certain policy benefits to the enterprise,it does not bring substantial improvement to the enterprise,and once the R&D manipulation is exposed,it will worsen the reputation of the enterprise and its managers.Therefore,with the expansion of negative feedback,decision-makers will actively seek new solutions to reduce the possibility of R&D manipulation.Through the group inspection of media reports and industry competition,it is found that the inhibitory effect of negative feedback on R&D manipulation behavior is more obvious when companies have fewer negative reports and lower industry competition,while there is no significant difference in the group of positive media reports.This article further examines the relationship between negative feedback,R&D manipulation and R&D efficiency,and finds that R&D manipulation has a partial mediating effect between negative feedback and R&D efficiency,indicating that the R&D efficiency of Chinese companies is not high,partly because these companies In order to obtain preferential policies,it was caused by R&D manipulation.This article also further studied the influence of positive feedback on R&D manipulation behavior,and found that there is no significant relationship between the two.Chapter Ⅶ: This chapter is mainly about the conclusions and suggestions of this article.This chapter summarizes the research conclusions of the full text,puts forward relevant suggestions to managers,and finally points out the deficiencies of the research in this article.The possible innovations of this article are as follows:(1)Based on the background of China’s system,this article explains the impact of negative feedback on enterprise R&D investment under different external factors.On the basis of corporate behavior theory and prospect theory,this paper takes Chinese listed companies in the transitional period as the research object,systematically and completely constructs three scenarios of macro-medium-micro,and deeply studies the influence of relevant factors on R&D investment under the performance expectation gap.This research can make up for the shortcomings of previous studies on the analysis of external environmental factors,further enrich the theory of corporate behavior and prospects,and provide international research with research on R&D issues from transition economies.(2)Based on the background of my country’s system reform,this article analyzes the impact of negative feedback on the efficiency of enterprise R&D under the influence of different factors.In the past,scholars have conducted a lot of research on the relationship between performance expectation gap and R&D investment,but few scholars have further studied the impact of performance expectation gap on R&D efficiency.This paper uses the DEA method to measure R&D efficiency,and focuses the research on the impact of negative feedback on R&D efficiency.This research can not only widen the gap between performance expectations and the scope of the company’s R&D research,but also help improve the efficiency of the company’s resource allocation.(3)Based on the background of the Chinese system,this article expounds the impact of negative feedback on corporate R&D manipulation.Studies have shown that companies have R&D manipulation behaviors,but whether companies with negative feedback will also have R&D manipulation behaviors,there is currently no literature that can be explored.This article studies the relationship between negative feedback and R&D operations.This not only provides a new perspective for the study of corporate behavior theory,but also helps Chinese companies improve the quality of research and development,and promote the smooth transformation and upgrading of enterprises.There are still deficiencies in the research of this article,but the research on the performance expectation gap,R&D efficiency and R&D manipulation is a positive attempt.This article aims to attract more scholars to conduct more comprehensive and in-depth research on enterprise R&D,so as to inject scientific research power into promoting the high-quality development of China’s economy.