Jin Guanghui, Jiang Qingjuan, Liu Xiaolin
School of Management, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jan 17;12:814646. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.814646. eCollection 2021.
We examined whether and how managerial ability affects the relationship between customer concentration and corporate performance. Based on a novel measure of managerial ability, we found that customer concentration has a significant negative effect on corporate performance, while managerial ability can mitigate this effect. The negative effect of customer concentration is only significant in the subsample of low ability and lower efficiency in asset utilization, while the moderating effect of managerial ability is significant for all levels of asset utilization efficiency and more significant for firms with a lower gross margin. The results are robust to numerous robustness tests and endogeneity concerns. Additional analysis of mechanisms shows that in addition to superior operating ability, competent managers select major customers who are more beneficial to their company and decrease the sensitivity of their research and development (R&D) investment to customers. These findings indicate that the heterogeneity of managerial ability plays an important role in the supplier-customer context when the supplier firm generally faces one or more concentrated customers.
我们研究了管理能力是否以及如何影响客户集中度与企业绩效之间的关系。基于一种新颖的管理能力衡量方法，我们发现客户集中度对企业绩效有显著的负面影响，而管理能力可以减轻这种影响。客户集中度的负面影响仅在低能力和资产利用效率较低的子样本中显著，而管理能力的调节作用在所有资产利用效率水平上都显著，对于毛利率较低的公司更为显著。这些结果在众多稳健性测试和内生性问题方面都是稳健的。机制的进一步分析表明，除了卓越的运营能力外，有能力的管理者会选择对其公司更有利的主要客户，并降低其研发投资对客户的敏感性。这些发现表明，当供应商公司普遍面临一个或多个集中客户时，管理能力的异质性在供应商 - 客户背景中起着重要作用。
