| Under the tide of digital economy era,digital transformation is gradually becoming the only way of high-quality development of microeconomic subjects.But in fact,the practice of digital transformation of Chinese manufacturing enterprises is not optimistic,and they are facing the practical problems of insufficient digital transformation power and poor transformation performance.It is difficult for many manufacturing enterprises to get out of the traditional management mode.High cost of digital reconstruction and fierce digital competition make many enterprises stop.In business practice,digital technology has not brought expected economic benefits to enterprises,and even appears the phenomenon of "enterprise digitization paradox".At present,scholars discuss the motivation and performance of enterprise digital transformation from the perspective of enterprise’s own resource’s ability,but ignore the positive influence of digital economic environment and social groups on the reference of enterprise digital transformation decision and transformation performance.In the dynamic and complex digital ecological environment,there are social interactions including competition,cooperation,norms and pressure among the interconnected peer groups,which influence the digital transformation decisions and behaviors of enterprises imperceptibly.On the one hand,industry groups and regional groups with similar business operations or the same business environment may become the decision-making reference for enterprises’ digital transformation,thus affecting the practice of manufacturing enterprises’ digital transformation.On the other hand,cogroup is an effective external connection and an important channel for enterprises to acquire resources.It can produce significant external economic or spillover effects on enterprises in the cluster through labor reservoir,shared infrastructure,technology spillover and other means.Therefore,this paper discusses the decision-making and economic consequences of digital transformation of enterprises from the perspective of group effect,and provides a breakthrough to solve the problem of insufficient impetus and the paradox of digital transformation of Chinese enterprises.Therefore,this paper takes China’s A-share manufacturing listed companies as research samples,based on strategic ecological theory,externality theory,innovation capability theory and servitization theory of manufacturing enterprises,and uses bibliometric analysis,normative analysis and empirical analysis to explore the existence,formation mechanism,learning and imitation path and economic consequences of the cohorts of enterprise digital transformation.The main conclusions are as follows:First,the digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises has a significant industry cogroup effect,that is,the digital transformation of industry cogroup enterprises can promote the improvement of the digital transformation level of focus enterprises,and this conclusion remains valid after the endogeneity and robustness test.Industry competition expectation gap will promote the formation of industry peer effect in digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises.The learning and imitation path of the same group effect in the digital transformation industry will follow the "logical" imitation law.The digital transformation behavior of the enterprise group in the leading position of the industry competition will become the learning and imitation object of other enterprises in the industry.At the same time,the learning and imitation path based on corporate reputation shows that the digital transformation behavior of enterprises with high reputation will become the learning and imitation object of other enterprises in the industry.Secondly,the digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises has a significant regional cogroup effect,that is,the digital transformation of regional cogroup enterprises can promote the improvement of the digital transformation level of focus enterprises,and this conclusion remains valid after the endogeneity and robustness test.Regional market information transmission is the internal driving force to promote the formation of regional homogeneity effect in digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises.The learning and imitation path of the same group effect in the digital transformation area follows the "inside before out" imitation law,that is,state-owned enterprises will imitate the digital transformation behavior of other state-owned enterprises groups in the region,while private enterprises will imitate the digital transformation behavior of other private enterprises groups in the region.Meanwhile,the learning and imitation path based on firm size shows that large-scale enterprises will imitate the digital transformation behaviors of other large-scale enterprises groups in the region,while small-scale enterprises will imitate the digital transformation behaviors of other small-scale enterprises groups in the region.Third,the peer effect of digital transformation industries has a significant positive impact on the total factor productivity of manufacturing enterprises,and this conclusion remains valid after the robustness test.The improvement of innovation ability of manufacturing enterprises is the intermediary mechanism of the digital transformation industry to promote the improvement of total factor productivity.Further research shows that industrial competition has an inverted U-shaped moderating effect on the relationship between the peer effect of digital transformation industries and the total factor productivity of manufacturing enterprises.That is,when the manufacturing enterprises are in a moderate industrial competition environment,the peer effect of digital transformation industries will have a positive impact on the total factor productivity of enterprises.Fourthly,the same-group effect of digital transformation region has a significant positive impact on the total factor productivity of manufacturing enterprises,and this conclusion remains valid after the robustness test.The improvement of servitization level of manufacturing enterprises is the intermediary mechanism of the digital transformation area co-group effect to promote the improvement of total factor productivity of manufacturing enterprises.Further research shows that the market environment plays a positive moderating role in the relationship between the same-group effect and the total factor productivity of manufacturing enterprises in the digital transformation area.At the same time,the government and legal environment has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between copopulation effect and total factor productivity of manufacturing enterprises in digital transformation areaThe possible innovations and research contributions of this paper are as follows:first,it breaks through the classical framework of strategic theory and reveals the strategic decision-making logic of enterprises in the digital economy environment from the perspective of strategic ecological theory,which provides a theoretical perspective for understanding the digital strategic decision-making process of manufacturing enterprises and the phenomenon of digital strategic convergence of enterprises in the same group.Secondly,this paper analyzes the theoretical logic that the digital transformation group effect improves the total factor productivity by driving the quality change,efficiency change and dynamic change of manufacturing enterprises,and describes the evolution process of manufacturing enterprises to the advanced development form from a micro perspective.Thirdly,based on the theory of externality,the heterogeneity of industry cogroup effect and regional cogroup effect in digital transformation is investigated,and the differentiated impact of different types of cluster environment on the total factor productivity of manufacturing enterprises is clarified.At the same time,the degree of industry competition,market environment and government legal environment are included in the research framework,which can provide references for the government’s digital governance and the creation of a good business environment. |
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