Corporate Political Ties and Firm Performance in a Transition Economy: A Replication and Extension of Peng and Luo (2000)

How do corporate political ties impact firm performance in a transition economy? This topic has attracted wide attention in the strategy field. Accordingly, our study replicates a highly influential study, ‘Managerial ties and firm performance in a transition economy: The nature of a micro-macro link’ (Peng & Luo, 2000). The original study found that managerial political ties greatly improve organizational performance, and that this ‘micro-macro’ link varies across ownership types, business sectors, firm sizes, and industry growth rates. This replication study offers a hierarchical view of political ties by extending it from the individual to the organizational level and explores the complex link between the two levels of corporate political ties and firm performance. The results of a staged quasi-replication exercise show some similarities with the original study in the mechanism of corporate political ties on firm performance but, more importantly, reveal some key differences in the effect size and contingent effects. Furthermore, an extended test shows that corporate political ties are multilevel, and different levels of political ties vary in their mechanisms and effects on firm performance. The findings reveal temporal and contextual sensitivities of political ties studies in transition economies. 在转型经济体中，政治关联如何影响企业绩效？这一话题在战略管理领域引起了广泛关注。我们在本文中试图复制一项极具影响力的研究，即“转型经济中的管理层关系与企业绩效：一个‘微观——宏观’关系的本质”（Peng & Luo, 2000）。原研究发现，高管政治关联显著提高了组织绩效，而且这一“微观——宏观”关系因企业所有权性质、所属产业部门、企业规模及所处行业增长率不同而变化。本复制研究通过将政治关联从微观个体层面扩展到组织层面，引入政治关联的多层性观点，并全面检验两个层面的政治关联与企业绩效之间的关系。分阶段的准复制实证结果显示，虽然政治关联对企业绩效的影响机制与原始研究类似，但是这两项研究在关于政治关联效应大小和权变效应上存在关键差异。此外，进一步的拓展研究表明，企业政治关联是多层次的，不同层次的政治关联对企业绩效的作用机制和效应大小也存在显著差异。研究结果揭示了转型经济体中企业政治关联研究的时间和情境敏感性。