Yafei Zu

Purpose: As the new technological revolution reshapes firm life cycles, firms must adapt their subjective performance evaluations of top managers to suit their current stage of development. This study investigates the relationship between specific types of subjective performance evaluation and firm life-cycle stages. Furthermore, it examines the cross-sectional patterns, influence pathways, and economic consequences of this relationship. Design/methodology/approach: Using empirical data from Chinese listed firms spanning 2011–2024, this study employs a logit model to examine the relationship between subjective performance evaluation types and firm life-cycle stages. Findings: Firms in the growth stage tend to employ subjective adjustments to motivate top managers, whereas firms in the maturity stage tend to rely on subjective performance measures. These matching relationships vary significantly across firms with different ownership types, levels of market competition, board supervision, and managerial power. An appropriate match between subjective performance evaluation types and firm life-cycle stages enhances firm performance through the pathways of risk-taking and interest coordination. Originality/value: This study contributes to management control research by extending dynamic contingency theory to distinguish between types of subjective performance evaluation and to show their alignment with firm life-cycle stages. It further integrates behavioral agency and classical agency theories to reveal the dual mechanisms of risk-taking and interest coordination, explaining how dynamic fit enhances performance through behavioral and informational channels, thereby moving beyond conventional agency perspectives.

This paper studies the relationship between customer concentration and company risk‐taking and its underlying application scopes. The results show that customer concentration is positively related to company risk‐taking. Additional analyses discuss the moderating effect of customer concentration on company risk‐taking from the perspectives of managers' characteristics and directors' characteristics. The view of effective contract is supported by all these results. This paper not only theoretically clarifies the underlying theoretical relationship between customer concentration and company risk‐taking but also provides empirical application situations for companies to design incentive contract and adjust risk‐taking level.

We examine whether managers' narcissism explains the difficulty of the performance targets that they set for their subordinate employees and the resulting dysfunctional behaviors of these employees. Utilizing a field‐based data set and a government policy change that imposes higher performance standards, we document both direct and indirect associations between manager narcissism and employee dysfunctional behavior. In particular, we find that managers with a higher degree of narcissism respond to the higher performance standards by setting more difficult targets for their subordinates, which in turn lead to more employee dysfunctional behaviors. Furthermore, after controlling for the effect of target difficulty, we find that manager narcissism also has a direct positive association with employee dysfunctional behavior. Our findings contribute to the management accounting literature by documenting that narcissism, a personality trait that is ubiquitous among managers, plays an important role in affecting managers' control choices and the dysfunctional behaviors of lower‐level employees.

This paper aims to investigate the law and logic mechanism of management control matching pattern and company strategy aggressiveness under different strategies by textual analysis, based on the empirical data of Chinese A-share listed companies during the period from 2010 to 2018. Additional analyses further investigate the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty and R&D intensity on the relationship between management control matching type and strategy aggressiveness. The conclusion can help relevant departments to develop management control theory and method system with Chinese characteristics and provide theoretical reference for the matching mode of dual control. This paper uses the text analysis method. The main explanatory variables are analyzed using the computer SQL Server database software through the relevant text of the board of directors report in the company annual report. Other financial data came from the CSMAR database, excluding ST and PT and companies with missing data, and 16,902 samples were finally obtained. This paper conducted statistical analysis through Stata12. This paper shows that the matching pattern between formal and informal control is divided into three types. They have different impacts on strategy aggressiveness. Specifically, consistent matching type II significantly positively influences the aggressiveness of offensive strategy. Consistent matching type I significantly positively influences the aggressiveness of defensive strategy. Complementary matching type I significantly positively influences the aggressiveness of analytical strategy. Additional analyses find that compared with non-high-tech companies, high-tech companies have more significant influence on the relationship between management control matching pattern and company strategic aggressiveness. And compared with other two “strategy-control” matching patterns, both environmental uncertainty and product innovation have more significant influence on the relationship between consistent matching II and offensive strategy aggressiveness. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper divides the formal and informal control matching patterns of management control into three categories for the first time. It examines the relationship between the formal and informal control matching of management accounting and the degree of strategy aggressiveness. The conclusion provides new empirical evidence to promote the effective implementation of development strategies for companies. It can help relevant departments to develop management control theory and method systems with Chinese characteristics and provide theoretical references for the matching mode of dual control.

Using empirical data in China from 2010 to 2018, this paper investigates the relationship between management control matching patterns and different modes of innovation by introducing a text analysis method. The study found that adaptation matching pattern has a significant positive impact on radical innovation, execution matching pattern has a significant positive impact on incremental innovation, and compensatory matching has a significant positive effect on balanced innovation. Additional analyses further show that the positive ‘control-innovation’ relationship becomes more significant in high-tech firms. Environmental uncertainty and the degree of executive risk preference have a heterogeneous regulatory effect on the choice of control matching and innovation model.

Recently, issues of carbon emissions are becoming more and more prominent, resulting in serious environmental problems. Many governments take actions to help enterprises to manufacture and sale products environmentally. This paper studies the impact of governmental intervention on the low-carbon strategies of the inter-organizations. Using the differential Stackelberg game model, a supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer is studied. Two situations including the market-base scenario and government-base scenario are considered. The optimal strategies of the effort on emission reduction and the retail price in these two situations are solved and compared. The results show that government's participation in regulation improves manufacturer's emission reduction effort and retailer's retail price. The numerical analysis further confirms the research results.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study enterprise innovation in the perspective of external supplier relationship. On this purpose, this paper examines the impact of supplier change on enterprise innovation with the moderating role of market competition.Design/methodology/approach: Using 2012–2020 empirical data of Chinese listed manufacturing enterprises, this paper investigates the relationship among supplier change, market competition and enterprise innovation through a two-way interaction model.Findings: The results show that supplier change has a negative impact on enterprise innovation. And market competition intensifies the negative relationship between supplier change and enterprise innovation. Additional analyses indicate that the main effect and the moderating effect are more significant when the enterprise is non-state-owned or has lower ownership concentration.Originality/value: This paper studies enterprise innovation from the perspective of external stakeholders. It focuses on supplier relationship in a dynamic variation view, instead of the traditional static ones. Moreover, this paper explores the contingency effect of market competition and gives practical implications for managers to adjust innovation strategy flexibly.

Advertising has a crucial impact on a product's goodwill. To further improve a product's goodwill and make more profit, member firms in the supply chain use various contracts to coordinate the channel. Considering the dynamic effect of advertising, this paper studies a two-level supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer. The two members focus on maximizing their profits through advertising and pricing strategies under two types of contracts: the wholesale price contract and the consignment contract. The Stackelberg differential game is introduced, and the optimal advertising effort, wholesale and retail pricing strategies in the two situations are studied. Numerical examples and sensitivity analyses are conducted to explore the models further. The results show that the retailer's revenue proportion and the product's goodwill according to consumers significantly affect the strategies and the contract choice of the partner firms in the supply chain. A proportion of too high or too low revenue may lead to a contract selection conflict between the two partner firms. However, when consumers care more about the product's goodwill, this contract selection conflict can be weakened.

This paper investigates the optimal inter-organization control of collaborative advertising considering the myopic and far-sighted behaviors. Taking a two-echelon supply chain as an example, four kinds of differential game models including myopic Stackelberg game, far-sighted Stackelberg game, myopic cooperative game and far-sighted cooperative game are studied. The results show that the optimal advertising efforts of both manufacturer and retailer in the myopic situation decrease with time. But they remain constant in the far-sighted situation. The Pareto improvement applies to both game players from the non-cooperative game to the cooperative game. The numerical analyses are conducted to further investigate the theoretical results and to guide the inter-organization control of collaborative advertising in practice.