本文基于2007—2017年中国A股上市公司的数据，实证检验了外来文化冲击下的儒家文化对企业创新的影响。数据结果显示，企业创新在传统的儒家文化影响下有正向增加的趋势，而当外来文化进入到中国后，对现有的儒家文化形成了一定的冲击，儒家文化对中国企业的创新激励效果被部分削弱。为了进一步打开文化融合影响创新的暗箱，本文加入外来文化的地缘特征后发现，地缘亲近的亚洲地区文化与儒家文化的相似性过高，反而导致二者在企业创新中产生了冲突，而与儒家文化特征相反的美洲地区外来文化与儒家文化共同对企业创新产生了促进作用；究其原因与外来文化的不同特征维度有关，其中来自更低权利距离国家的文化，较低不确定性规避国家的文化以及更高个人主义国家的文化与儒家文化的结合有利于创新的促进。
Abstract
National culture is relevant to business outcomes. As the essence of Chinese traditional culture, Confucianism has influenced the social development of past dynasties over China′s long history. Therefore, the values, beliefs and, notably, economic activities of modern-day entrepreneurs are greatly affected by Confucianism. Max Weber once pointed out that the promotion of familism in Confucianism lead to the joint relationship between groups, which stifle the development of individual innovation ability, thus hindering economic development. In 2018, the research and development (R&D) expenditure of China has reached RMB 1.965 trillion, accounting for 2.18% of GDP, and ranked 17th in the Global Innovation Index (GII), which has brought great challenges for Max Weber′s judgment.
Confucianism is the most profound culture in China, which not only penetrates into people′s daily life, but also integrates into the management concepts of enterprises. Specifically, the innovative ideas contained in the Confucianism, such as "One day innovated, do so day to day. Yea, let there be daily innovation (苟日新, 又日新, 日日新)", play a significant role in guiding the innovative behavior of corporations. Meanwhile, to transform the nation from a technology-imitated economy into a knowledge-based economy, the Chinese central government has launched several policies to attract foreign innovative talents for the Chinese corporations who are expected to complement the cognitive limitations and problem solving styles of native talents, so as to maximize firm value. But foreign talents also bring about foreign culture, the interaction between Confucianism and foreign culture became uncertain, and the collision and integration between different cultural types has different effects on corporate innovation.
China is the second largest economy in the world, the effect of Confucianism on economics and technology as well as the multiple integration of Confucianism and other cultures are worth studying. Indeed, recent literature has documented that national culture affects numerous facets of corporate behavior. In light of the important role that culture can have in shaping corporate policy, our study aims to answer three questions: (1) How Confucianism influence corporate innovation in China? (2) Under the impact of foreign culture, can Confucianism and foreign culture jointly foster corporate innovation? And (3) What is inside of the black-box that cause the conflicts or integration happens?
Through the analysis of existing literature and Confucian classics, the paper finds that Confucianism may has both positive and negative aspects to enterprise behavior, and puts forward two competitive hypotheses: Confucianism fosters or stifles corporate innovation behavior. On the basis of supporting the hypothesis that Confucianism will foster corporate innovation behavior, this paper further explores the conflict and integration effects of two or more cultures under the impact of foreign cultures. In order to test the hypothesis results, the paper utilities the data of China′s A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2017 as the research sample. The paper also uses multiple regression research method and finds that Confucianism can foster the corporate innovation. After joining foreign cultures, the promoting effect of Confucianism on corporate innovation was weakened and cultural conflicts arisen. In addition, the paper replaces the measurement of Confucianism, foreign culture and corporate innovation respectively, and finds that the results remain unchanged. The results are also robust to propensity score matching and two-stage instrumental regressions that account for endogeneity. In order to further examine the empirical results and explore the integration effect of culture, the paper selects the data of listed companies with foreign executives as a new sample, and conducts subgroup regressions according to categorize of the regions and the dimensions of Hofstede′s cultural index. The results suggest that foreign cultures from Asian region with relatively similar cultural dimensions do not merge with Confucianism as expected. On the contrary, it enlarges the part of Confucianism that is not conducive to corporate innovation, thus resulting in conflicts. While the foreign culture from the American region with greater differences in cultural dimensions will enhance the role of Confucianism in promoting corporate innovation. In a word, the foreign culture with low power distance, individualism and low uncertainty avoidance has the inclusive and complementing effect, which help to balance the negative effects of Confucianism on corporate innovation.
Compared with the existing literature, the paper might have three contributions: First, enriching and expanding the relevant research of corporate innovation. Most of the existing literature explore the influencing factors of corporate innovation from the perspective of national policy and enterprise system, the paper focuses on the impact of informal system such as culture on corporate innovation. The conclusions not only provide new ideas for exploring influencing factors of corporate innovation, but also enrich the theoretical connotation of culture and innovation. Second, the extant literature provides little evidence about the relationship between culture and decision-making from the perspective of conflict and integration of multiple cultures. Therefore, the paper analyses the impact of the combined effects of multiple cultures on corporate innovation. There are two kinds of contact results between different cultures, one is integration, the other is conflict, which has different effects on corporate behavior, thus enriching the theory of cultural conflict and integration. Third, China′s demand for self-innovation is increasing, cooperating with foreign talents has become an important way for many enterprises to choose. Our study also provide useful insights to the Chinese government regarding the effectiveness of their foreign talent policies, to Chinese firms to evaluate the value of recruiting foreign talents, and to other emerging economies to shape their foreign talent recruitment decisions and investment policies in ensuring value creation.
关键词
儒家文化 /
外来文化冲击 /
企业创新
Key words
Confucianism /
foreign culture impact /
corporate innovation
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基金
国家自然科学基金项目：“儒家文化与内部控制有效性：作用路径、经济后果和外部治理”（71802067，2019.01—2021.12）。
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