Resolving the problem of excess production capacity through sustainable technological innovation is an important issue facing the Chinese economy in achieving high-quality development. The Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Resolving the Contradiction of Severe Overcapacity promulgated by the government in 2013 undoubtedly had a huge external impact on the traditionally competitive manufacturing market. This paper uses 6680 company-year sample observations of 1609 A-share manufacturing listed companies in China from 2010 to 2017 to examine the impact of capacity reduction pressure on ‘corporate sustainable innovation’ (the strategic response made by the enterprise administrator to cope with the impacts of the external environment including economic, social and environmental aspects) investment and the moderating role of financing constraints on this relationship. The research shows that after the promulgation of the Guiding Opinions, the degree of overcapacity had a significant positive effect on the R&D investment of enterprises, indicating that the policy to resolve overcapacity promoted their sustainable innovation investment. Such a phenomenon indicates that, to a certain extent, in the context of capacity reduction, companies have strong pressure and motivation to seek a way out through sustainable innovation. However, financing constraints have a significant inhibitory influence on the anti-forcing effect of the capacity reduction policy, indicating that the ability of enterprises to respond to external capacity reduction policies is subject to their own limited financing. Further investigation shows that capacity reduction pressure mainly promotes the sustainable innovation investment of private enterprises and has no significant impact on that of state-owned enterprises. This may be because private enterprises struggled more for survival during the transition period. The results of this paper provide a theoretical basis and reference value for the formulation of government policies and the development of enterprises.

In recent years, the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firm performance has received increasing attention, with academic research deepening in this field. This study introduces national culture as a moderating variable and explores the relationship between national culture, CSR, and firm performance to determine the role of national culture in the impact of CSR on firm performance. Data of listed companies from 15 different countries, between 2011 and 2020, were collected for empirical analysis. Comprehensive environmental, social and governance (ESG) score was used to measure the degree of CSR fulfillment. The results reveal that CSR hinders firm performance. In terms of national culture, power distance index, and uncertainty avoidance have a negative relationship with firm performance, while individualism has a positive impact. Conversely, power distance index can enhance the negative correlation between CSR and firm performance. This study suggests that governments should appropriately intervene in the implementation of CSR and take the initiative to foster a national cultural climate of individualism and democracy.

Few studies have addressed how customer concentration affects the decision of a firm’s research and development (R&D) strategies and then innovation outcome. Using a sample of China’s listed companies for the period from 2009 to 2017, this study investigates the relationship between customer concentration and enterprise sustainable innovations, as well as how such the relationship changes with economic policy uncertainty. The findings imply that there is a significant inverted-U-shaped relationship between customer concentration and enterprise sustainable innovations. Under a high level of economic policy uncertainty, the advantage of the customer relationship is maximized. In this context, raising customer concentration significantly promotes enterprise sustainable innovations. Customer concentration affects innovations differently as the equity properties, and locations of enterprises vary under different levels of economic policy uncertainty. Thus, the interval of customer concentration conducive to enterprise innovations differs. The results are robust to econometric techniques that control for endogeneity. Overall, our findings suggest that enterprises build and adjust the customer relationship and improve the driving mechanism for sustainable innovations.

This paper investigates the relationship between business strategy and cost stickiness under different ownership. Using the data from listed firms in China from 2002 to 2015, we find that first, firms with different strategies exhibit different cost behavior. The cost stickiness of choosing a differentiation strategy is higher than that of choosing a low-cost strategy. Second, management expectations will affect cost stickiness. Optimistic expectations will increase cost stickiness, while pessimistic expectations will reduce cost stickiness. Third, management expectations can adjust the relationship between business strategy and cost stickiness in terms of government-created advantages (GCAs). If management expectations tend to be optimistic, the cost stickiness is higher with a differentiation strategy than with a low-cost strategy. If management expectations tend to be pessimistic, then cost stickiness is higher with a low-cost strategy than with a differentiation strategy. Finally, the state-owned equity affects the extent of the effect of a differentiation strategy on cost stickiness. State-owned firms, which receive more GCAs than non-state-owned firms, have stronger cost stickiness than non-state-owned firms, even if both categories of firms use more differentiation strategy.