An Empirical Research On The Relationship Between Operational Leanness And Credit Ratings

The research on the influence of lean production on corporate performance originated from the 1980s.Then a large number of scholars proved that there was a significant positive relationship between lean production and corporate performance.However,financial performance indicators of a company only reflect its past operating conditions.Compared with accounting measurement indicators such as return on assets,credit rating indicators are forward-looking.Credit rating indicators not only include the implementation effect of lean operation that has been disclosed in the company's financial statements,but also consider the long-term benefits or risks that may be brought by operational leanness.Starting from the latter perspective,this study focuses on the company's credit rating indicators and divides the company's lean operation into two types from the perspective of asset liquidity:lean of current assets and lean of fixed assets,exploring the relationship between operational leanness and the company's credit rating based on the industrial background and industrial type.Firstly,this study reviews the literatures on operational leanness,corporate credit rating,industry prosperity and industry type studied by domestic and foreign scholars in the past.Meanwhile,an alternative variable,the ELI(Empirical Leanness Indicator),is built to measure the degree of operational leanness of the company.Current assets lean degree is measured by Inventory lean index I-NV ELI(Inventory Empirical Leanness Indicator)and the lean degree of fixed assets is measured by PPE ELI(Property Plant Equipment Empirical Leanness Indicator).According to the kinds of purchasers,this study divides the manufacturing industry into two categories:the industrial sector and the consumer sector.The goods of the former are purchased and used by enterprises,government agencies,organizations and various units and the goods of the latter are purchased and used by individual or household consumers.According to the classification standard of Wind industry using the same classification method of Global Industry Classification System(GICS),385 manufacturing companies listed in China's A-share from 2008 to 2017 were selected as samples for research,which contains industrial companies and consumer companies listed in China's A-share.Then,this study uses generalized least squares(GLS)to analyze the financial data and credit rating data of industrial listed companies and consumer listed companies from 2008 to 2017 and studies the relationship between operational leanness and company's credit rating in China.At the same time,based on the characteristics of the industry environment and manufacturing industry,the two moderating variables of industry prosperity and industry type were innovatively added to explore the moderating effect on the main effect.The empirical results of main effect show that inventory leanness is positively correlated with corporate credit rating.PPE leanness is negatively correlated with corporate credit rating.The empirical results of moderating effect show that when the degree of industry prosperity is high,the positive correlation between inventory leanness and corporate credit rating is significantly enhanced.When the degree of industry prosperity is high,the hypothesis that the negative correlation between PPE leanness and corporate credit rating is significantly weakened is not established.Industry type has no significant m oderating effect on the positive correlation between inventory leanness and corporate credit rating.The negative correlation between PPE leanness and corporate credit rating in industrial industry is stronger than that in consumer industry.Finally,this study combines industry prosperity and industry type and puts forwards corresponding Suggestions for the implementation of operational leanness measures from the inventory and PPE levels respectively,which has important theoretical guidance and practical meaning for the company's operation and production.