Do political ties facilitate operational efficiency? A contingent political embeddedness perspective
基于中国民营上市公司面板数据，研究发现政治关系与运营效率负相关，且这种负向关系在要素市场不发达地区和竞争激烈行业更强，但外资持股和客户集中度高时减弱。
Abstract Although the significance of relational ties with supply chain partners to firms' operations management has been frequently studied, it is unclear how political ties, which represent another form of relational ties that is especially important in emerging economies, relate to operational efficiency. Drawing on the political embeddedness perspective, we propose a negative association between political ties and operational efficiency and examine how this association is moderated by environmental and firm‐level factors. Using panel data of listed private firms in China, we show that political ties are negatively correlated with operational efficiency. In addition, this negative relationship is stronger when firms operate in regions with less developed factor markets and in highly competitive industries. However, the negative relationship is weaker for firms with high levels of foreign shareholding and customer concentration. These findings caution against the downsides of political ties for operations management and highlight strategies for reducing their negative effect.