Strategic renewal in declining firms is often discussed in terms of exploratory actions alongside retrenchment measures that relieve short-term resource pressures. Prior findings remain mixed, partly because these actions are frequently examined in isolation rather than as interdependent bundles. Adopting a configurational perspective, this study examines how combinations of retrenchment and multiple exploratory actions relate to recovery performance across varying resource endowments and environmental conditions. Using Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) on a sample of 285 declining Chinese manufacturing firms, this study identifies multiple equifinal pathways associated with high recovery performance and finds that no single condition is necessary for recovery. A notable pattern concerns layoffs: although commonly linked to negative outcomes in linear models, layoffs are associated with high recovery in specific configurations—particularly when coupled with complementary exploratory actions and sufficient buffering resources—while being associated with non-recovery in other bundles. Overall, the findings offer configuration-based evidence on when retrenchment and exploration act as complements versus misfits, and they provide configuration-specific implications for managing turnaround under resource constraints and environmental dynamism.

Most firms will experience a decline in their development process. The contraction in demand and the impact of COVID-19 have exacerbated a firm's performance. Under the dilemma of resources reduction and recovery, the declining firm pays more attention to the efficient utilization of the diminishing innovation resources. Based on upper echelon theory and principal-agent theory, this study investigates the impacts of top management team (TMT) tenure heterogeneity and ownership concentration on innovation efficiency. The sample consists of 534 firm observations after PSM nearest-neighbour matching, sourced from A-share listed manufacturing firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2015 to 2019. Innovation efficiency of declining firms is measured using the Malmquist Index method. The fixed-effects (FE) model, PSM-DID model, and stepwise regression are employed to test our hypotheses. The main findings conclude that TMT tenure heterogeneity improves innovation efficiency, and the effect in declining firms is stronger compared to normal firm. Moreover, the concentrated ownership structure inhibits this positive effect because of the excessive tight control over TMT, and this inhibitory effect is stronger in declining firms than normal firms. The robustness checks of alternative variables and alternative regression model, and the addressing of endogenous problem, further support these findings. Efficiency improvement is crucial for the recovery of declining firm. The introduction of an efficiency perspective bridges the gaps in the existing literature. This study contributes to the literature on upper echelon theory and principal-agent theory by integrating them into the context of declining firms. The continuous interaction between the replacement TMT members and ownership restructuring shapes the dynamic capability of declining firms, contributing to the dynamic capability literature. The findings also provide practical guidelines for declining firms, such as replacing top management members and diluting equity, to achieve recovery. It is noted that an excessive focus on efficiency can also lead to neglecting thorough strategic change.

Organizational decline has attracted the attention of scholars and management practitioners interested in achieving rapid and effective recovery for declining firms in the context of digitalization and high-quality development. Organizational decline stimulates firms to respond with strategic changes. However, individual strategic change activities are difficult to promote recovery. Based on data from Chinese listed declining manufacturing firms from 2013 to 2020, an integrated analysis framework is constructed to examine the impacts of configurations constituted by seven conditional factors on recovery. The main findings are as follows: (1) No single antecedent condition is necessary for high/non-high recovery performance. (2) The choice of digital transformation or innovation is determined by internal slack resources and external dynamic environments. There are six configurations that can achieve high recovery performance, as well as two configurations that lead to non-high recovery performance. (3) High layoffs and ample slack resources are important antecedent conditions for achieving high recovery performance. Declining firms should prioritize high layoffs as their retrenchment strategy. In contrast, declining firms should retrench their assets with caution to achieve high recovery. (4) Under dynamic environments, unplanned innovation activities, digital transformation, or asset retrenchment are more likely to lead to the failure of recovery.

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基于1998-2013年中国工业企业和中国专利匹配数据,利用多时点双重差分法,探究合资与中国通用设备制造业企业创新的内在关系.结果表明:合资虽从总体上提升了企业的创新水平,但同时使企业产生了对国外技术的依赖,自主创新水平下降.通过异质性分析,发现相较于内资控股企业,外商控股合资企业对外源技术的依赖性更强;相较于民营企业,国有企业产生的合资依赖性更强.研究结论对全面认识中外合资行为,提高企业自主创新水平具有启示意义.

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Scenario endows a product with meanings. It has become the key to win the competition to design a product according to specific usage scene. Traditional scenario identification and product feature association methods have disadvantages such as subjectivity, high cost, coarse granularity, and limited scenario can be identified. In this regard, we propose a BERT-based scenario-feature identification model to effectively extract the information about users' experience and usage scene from online reviews. First, the scenario-feature identification framework is proposed to depict the whole identification process. Then, the BERT-based scene-sentence recognition model is constructed. The Skip-gram and word vector similarity methods are used to construct the scene and feature lexicon. Finally, the triad is constructed through the analysis of scene-feature co-occurrence matrix, which realizes the association of scenario and product features. This proposed model is of great practical value for product developers to better understand customer's requirements in specific scenarios. The experiments of scenario-feature identification from the reviews of Pacific Auto verifies the effectiveness of this method.

Most firms will face decline in their life cycle. Innovation is an important strategic choice for declining firms to achieve recovery and even regain long-term competitive advantage. Declining firms adopt many different strategic measures such as innovation, top management team restructuring, and CEO power adjustment to reverse their performance. Based on upper echelons theory and imprinting theory, from the perspective of power, using the data of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2015 to 2019, this paper empirically tests the impacts of TMT functional background heterogeneity and CEO power on the innovation efficiency of declining firms. The result shows that, compared with normal firms, TMT functional background heterogeneity has a stronger promoting effect on the innovation efficiency of declining firms, while the excessive CEO power will more significantly inhibit this effect.

Scenario endows a product with meanings.It has become the key to win the competition to design a product according to specific usage scene.Traditional scenario identification and product feature association methods have disadvantages such as subjectivity, high cost, coarse granularity, and limited scenario can be identified.In this regard, we propose a BERT-based scenario-feature identification model to effectively extract the information about users' experience and usage scene from online reviews.Firstly, the scenario-feature identification framework is proposed to depict the whole identification process.Then the BERT-based scene-sentence recognition model is constructed.The Skip-gram and word vector similarity methods are used to construct the scene and feature lexicon.Finally, the triad is constructed through the analysis of scene-feature co-occurrence matrix, which realizes the association of scenario and product features.This proposed model is of great practical value for product developers to better understand customer's requirements in specific scenarios.The experiments of scenario-feature identification from the reviews of Pacific Auto verifies the effectiveness of this method.

The fluctuation of performance influences risk preference of a firm, and thus its R&D investment behavior. This study examines the relationships between performance shock and R&D investment behaviors from the perspective of prospect theory with a sample of 200871 Chinese manufacturing firms for the period 2005-2007. R&D persistence gets validated, and it is affected by performance shock. Consistent with the extant literature, this study verified the higher risk-seeking in R&D investment for an underperforming firm. Contrary to our expectation, the positive performance promotes a profitable firm’s innovation. Technology capability weakens the effects of performance shock on R&D persistence and R&D expenditures of a loss firm, and amplifies those effects of a profitable firm. Moreover, the industry specific characteristics also demonstrate different influences on R&D expenditures.

Firms, especially Chinese manufacturing firms, invest significant resources in innovation activities to sustain their position in the intensifying competitive environment. However, innovation efficiency has led to growing concerns due to the rapid increase in R&D expenditures. The purpose of this study is to explore the complicated role of competition on innovation efficiency and firm performance with a sample of 12,020 Chinese manufacturing firms for the period 2005–2007. The results show that most Chinese manufacturing firms are inefficient in R&D activities. Competition forces firms to focus on the improvement of innovation efficiency, but at the same time, it also undermines collaboration and leads to unpredictable R&D results. Therefore, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between these variables. Competition also negatively moderates the positive impact of innovation efficiency on firm performance. The findings help firms formulate appropriate innovation strategies for sustainable innovation performance.

基于2008～2019年我国制造业企业微观面板数据,运用固定效应模型考察中美贸易摩擦对我国制造业技术创新的影响,探究中美贸易摩擦对高技术和低技术企业技术创新影响的差异,进一步运用中介效应模型研究中美贸易摩擦对技术创新的影响路径.研究发现,中美贸易摩擦在短时间内会抑制我国制造业技术创新,但长期会倒逼企业增加研发投入,增强创新意识,进而促进技术创新;相比低技术制造业企业,中美贸易摩擦对高技术制造业技术创新的影响更加显著;进一步在影响路径研究中发现中美贸易摩擦主要通过企业贸易成本增加导致企业利润下滑、研发投入减少,进而抑制企业技术创新.

选取"一带一路"倡议作为贸易自由化政策衡量事件,结合双循环经济背景,使用2009～2019年A股上市公司作为研究样本,运用双重差分法考察"一带一路"倡议对中国企业创新的影响,同时分析融资约束的中介作用.结果表明,国家坚持高质量对外开放,有助于推动形成国内外双循环的新发展格局,且这一效果会通过缓解企业融资约束达成.企业异质性分析发现,民营企业和大规模企业的创新能力提升更为显著.该研究结论有助于理解"一带一路"倡议所产生的积极效益,在双循环的经济发展新格局下,为政府进一步完善政策和中国企业强化利用政策能力提供启示.

The increasing Chinese online reviews contain rich product demand information, especially for search products. This study suggests a product feature extraction model from online reviews based on multi-feature fusion named PFEMF (products features extraction based on multi-feature fusion) model. Combining sentence and word characteristics of Chinese online reviews, the model explores the lexical features, frequency features, span features, and semantic similarity features of words. And then, they are fused to identify the features that customers are concerned about most by sequential relationship analysis. The identified product feature provides direction for product innovation and facilitates the product selection for customers. Finally, the study takes iPad Air as an example to prove this model. The results show that the extraction performance of the PFEMF model is superior to the traditional term frequency-inverse document frequency (tf-idf) algorithm, word span algorithm, and semantic similarity algorithm.

实现产业数字化转型,人力资本与中小民营企业创新互动十分关键,亟待以制度创新进行推动.本文以产业创新生态系统价值引领与多主体互动为理论基础,分析东北地区中小民营企业发展形成的技术需求,因缺少先进知识与技能型人力资本积极的供给响应所引发的问题,从人力资本与民营企业创新价值协同、创新主体互动以及主体间数据互动等方面,提出了制度创新方向及政策着力点.

基于2015年我国去杠杆政策提出这一准自然实验,选取2013～2018年制造业上市公司数据,运用双重差分方法考察了去杠杆政策对我国制造业企业资本结构动态调整的影响效应,探讨了去杠杆政策对资本结构动态调整的影响机制,进一步研究了去杠杆政策在产权性质、企业规模两方面对企业资本结构动态调整速度影响产生的差异.研究发现,去杠杆政策显著加快了我国制造业企业资本结构动态调整速度;相对于国有企业,去杠杆政策对非国有企业资本结构动态调整速度影响更加显著;相对于小规模企业,大规模企业的政策效应更加明显.在影响机制的研究中发现,去杠杆政策通过增加企业融资约束进而加快资本结构动态调整速度,融资约束在去杠杆政策加快企业资本结构动态调整中起到部分中介作用.

从东北地区经济增长出现的问题,以及东北经济振兴的紧迫性和重要意义出发,引出专著《东北地区产业集群形成与演化研究》出版的意义,阐述该专著的主要内容,提出该书的独特视角、理论与实证的特点以及在学术思想、学术观点等方面的特色和创新性,指出该专著在东北经济振兴方面的文献价值.

基于空间集聚理论和企业创新理论,将产业集聚分为规模集聚和空间集聚两个维度,构建了产业集聚对高技术产业研发投入强度影响作用的计量模型,进而利用1995-2012年高技术产业面板数据对相关参数进行了估计和检验.相关结果表明:高技术产业的规模集聚和空间集聚与其研发投入强度均呈倒U形关系,应重点控制计算机及办公设备制造业的集聚度;在对研发投入强度的作用上,规模集聚和空间集聚存在相互替代效应,中小企业增强了集聚区创新活力,大企业的空间扩张则丰富了集聚所需资源要素;不同的细分行业,集聚对研发投入强度的作用不同.