摘要
在过去的半个世纪里组织宽余一直都是组织与管理研究领域中的一个重要概念,但宽余对组织而言究竟意味着什么或者说宽余在组织的运营中究竟扮演怎样的角色,不同学者之间一直存在不小的争议,现存的实证研究也未能给出一致的证据。文章从组织宽余最为经典的基础文献整理入手,系统梳理了组织宽余的理论渊源、内涵和类型,归纳了学者们从不同理论视角对组织宽余的功能或效应做出的各种解读,以及目前已经积累的经验证据。同时,还对组织宽余测量中存在的问题进行了识别与分析,并提出了可能的解决方案。最后,就组织宽余如何更好地融入不同的主流管理研究议题作了一些探索性的解读,以求能够促成不同研究之间的通约与互鉴共长。
Organizational slack,defined as excessive resources in business,has received a growing research attention in the past decades.Researchers have been interested in understanding how slack resources may affect firms’strategic decisions and their performances.A lot of discussions around the necessity and rationality of the existence of slack have documented both the positive and negative attributes of slack.Meanwhile,empirical studies have also given contradictory evidence.The exact role of slack plays in the operations of an organization remains an open question.This paper starts with the classic documents of organizational slack.By systematically analyzing the theoretical origin,connotation and different types of organizational slack,as well as the accumulated empirical evidence,we summarize the various interpretations made by scholars from different theoretical perspectives on the function or effect of organizational slack and clarify them into two aspects:the loss of efficiency and the need for flexibility.The loss of efficiency is because excessive slack might induce competition for interests and aggravate agency problems,which in turn hinder risk-taking and innovation in organization.While the need for flexibility is due to the existence of uncertainty,and the organization needs to reserve certain resources to cope with potential risks.Organizational slack might become a valuable resource pool that can provide space for thinking,learning and experimentation needed for continuous innovation as well as enhance organization’s survival by dealing with competitive threat and financial risk.In addition,we note that scholars generally use proxy variables based on financial ratio indicators to measure the slack in the existing empirical studies,while bringing convenience to research,it also creates potential validity and reliability issues.After the systematic review and analysis of the concept of"slack",this paper proposes a cash flow-based financial slack measurement from the perspective of shareholders,which is
作者
游夏蕾
贾生华
You Xialei;Jia Shenghua
出处
《南方经济》
CSSCI
北大核心
2020年第2期88-107,共20页
South China Journal of Economics
基金
国家自然科学基金面上项目“家族参与对组织二元性及其价值效应的影响机制研究:基于社会情感财富视角(71672173)”。
关键词
组织宽余
组织冗余
代理成本
企业行为理论
组织资源
组织政治
Agency cost
A Behavioral Theory of the Firm
Organizational Slack
Organizational Resource
Organizational Politics
