The effects of slack resource of R&D professionals on firm performance: evidence from traditional manufacturing firms in an emerging economy
基于制度理论和资源基础观，研究了新兴经济体传统制造业中研发专业人员冗余资源与企业会计绩效的关系，发现线性与非线性关系并存，且两种理论均无法完全预测所有情况。
As an important component of organizational human resource slack (HR slack), the slack of research-and-development (R&D) professionals has been studied by several authors. However, it remains unclear whether and how this small component of general HR slack, i.e. the slack of research-and-development professionals (RHR slack), may affect overall firm performance in an emerging economy without much R&D tradition or pro-R&D institutions. Based on two organizational theories, i.e. institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm (RBV), we propose competing hypotheses on the relationship between RHR slack and firms’ accounting performance. We also examine whether the relationship between RHR slack and firm performance should be linear or curvilinear. Finally, we also test the relationship between RHR slack and other dimensions of firm performance. Several interesting findings have been obtained. For instance, neither the perspective based on institutional theory nor that based on RBV can fully predict all types of RHR slack-performance relationships, be these relationships linear or curvilinear.