Research On The Influence Of Supply Chain Relationship On The Cost Stickiness From A Strategic Perspective

As an important measure to accelerate economic transformation and development,China has always attached importance to the real economy,and the Central Economic Work Conference in December 2015 put forward the five tasks of "cutting overcapacity,reducing excess inventory,deleveraging,lowering costs,and strengthening areas of weakness",which provided clear guidelines for China’s sustained economic prosperity;in April 2021,the National Development and Reform Commission,the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology,the Ministry of Finance and the People’s Bank of China jointly issued the Circular on the Key Work of Reducing Costs in 2021,Ministry of Finance,Ministry of Finance and People’s Bank jointly issued the Notice on the Key Work of Cost Reduction in 2021,which made new regulations on tax relief,financing costs,labor costs,logistics costs and transaction costs,insisting on double reduction of implicit and explicit costs.Cost reduction is an important focus point for business management,and reducing cost stickiness is the key breakthrough to reduce costs.In the complex external environment,in order to effectively reduce the cost stickiness of enterprises,it is necessary to break the shackles of limited resources of individual enterprises and study the impact of supply chain relationships on the cost behavior in the industrial chain as a whole.This paper takes the A-share listed companies in China from 2010 to2020 as the sample,based on theories such as resource dependence theory,signaling theory and asset specificity,discusses and analyzes and proposes hypotheses,and uses linear regression models for empirical research,which is verified by robustness tests such as instrumental variables method,variable substitution method and reduced sample scope.The results of the study show that close supply chain relationships effectively reduce firms’ cost stickiness,and the impact of supply chain relationships on firms’ cost stickiness varies under different competitive strategies.Specifically,under the cost leadership strategy,strengthening supply chain cooperation cannot reduce the level of cost stickiness;on the contrary,under the differentiation strategy,strengthening supply chain cooperation will have a significant weakening effect on cost stickiness.Further exploring the mechanism of its impact found that close supply chain relationship mainly reduces cost stickiness by lowering firms’ agency costs,but the path of adjusting costs and managers’ optimistic expectations was not verified.Expanding to explore firms implementing differentiation strategies,we find that the inhibitory effect of supply chain relationships on cost stickiness is significant after the policy is proposed compared to before the supply-side structural reform policy is proposed.Based on the perspective of firms’ competitive strategies,this paper explores and confirms that close supply chain relationships are effective in reducing firms’ cost stickiness.From the theoretical point of view,this paper takes the competitive strategy of enterprises as the entry point to further analyze the influence of supply chain relationship on cost stickiness,which enriches the research on cost stickiness of enterprises;from the practical point of view,it helps enterprises to further enhance their cost management ability,make better cost decisions and achieve cost reduction and efficiency,and also provides a possible path for the government to strengthen the macroeconomic environment.