Conflicting Institutional Pressures and Corporate Digital Transformation in China with Prof. Rose Luo

SCCEI Spring Seminar Series 

Wednesday, May 10, 2023 | 11:00 am -12:15 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way

Conflicting Institutional Pressures and Corporate Digital Transformation in China 
 

Digital transformation has become a national policy in many countries. We examine in a centralized political system, how conflicting institutional pressures can affect corporate engagement in digital transformation of core manufacturing system. Given that a key benefit and consequence of digitalization is the replacement of low-skill labor, we propose that high pressure from unemployment can reduce the impact of proactive digital policies. Moreover, under high unemployment pressure, the government is likely to target firms that are less likely to lay off employees for digital transformation. As a result, ironically, firms that can potentially benefit more from digital transformation are less likely to digitalize. We test our argument with a sample of publicly listed manufacturing firms in China, and found strong support. Our study reveals decoupling in government action as well as in firm response, and contributes to a better understanding about the state influence on firms’ digital technologies in China.

About the Speaker  
    

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Rose Luo is the Rudolf and Valeria Maag Professor in Entrepreneurship and Family Business. She is Academic Director of the top-ranked Tsinghua-INSEAD dual-degree EMBA program and Department Chair of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD. Before INSEAD, she served as a tenured faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for 9 years. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology with a focus on organizational studies from Stanford University. Her research examines organizational responses to institutional pressures, corporate strategies in emerging markets, and family businesses. She has published numerous research studies in leading academic journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, and Strategic Management Journal, and serves as editorial board members in the journals.

Seminar Series Moderators  
 

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Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University.  For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Most recently, Rozelle's research focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition in China. In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner. 
 

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Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Hongbin obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.

Hongbin’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics.

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Questions? Contact Garrette Grothe at gtgrothe@stanford.edu