Survive the economic downturn: Operating flexibility, productivity, and stock crash
研究了运营灵活性如何通过削减非生产性成本来降低企业股票崩盘风险，尤其在经济衰退期间效果更显著，对低生产率或高运营杠杆的企业帮助更大。
Abstract Operating flexibility supports a firm's resilience strategy during challenging times by enabling them to promptly cut down operating costs associated with unproductive resources. We employ a real options model to formalize this insight. Our empirically grounding analytics motivate a firm‐level proxy for downscale operating flexibility (FLEX), which effectively captures the adjustment frictions across different contexts of firms' operations. Using U.S. data between 1961 and 2020, we show that operating flexibility mitigates the risk of stock price crashes, especially during periods of economic recession. Consistent with the loss‐curtailment mechanism, the operating flexibility effect is more pronounced for firms with lower productivity/profitability or higher operating leverage and is further amplified during longer and more severe recessions. Managers may avail themselves of our well‐tested empirical measure of operating flexibility to guide their efforts in building a more resilient operations structure.