Collective Collaboration vs. Individual Pursuit: Digital Transformation and New-Quality Productive Forces in Enterprises from the Perspective of the Peer Effect
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61360/BoniGHSS262020000302Keywords:
digital transformation, new quality productive forces of enterprises, peer effect, quality of innovation, text analysisAbstract
In the digital economy era, digital transformation serves as a crucial driver of enterprises' high-quality development. This study examines Chinese listed companies and develops an enterprise new quality productive forces index based on three dimensions: new quality laborers, new quality labor materials, and new quality labor objects. Through text analysis, the research assesses enterprise digital transformation and investigates its impact on new quality productive forces and transmission mechanisms. The findings demonstrate that digital transformation significantly enhances enterprises' new quality productive forces, a conclusion that remains robust after endogeneity concerns are addressed and multiple robustness tests are conducted. With respect to transmission mechanisms, digital transformation facilitates financing empowerment, labor empowerment, and quality empowerment, thereby alleviating financing constraints, optimizing labor resource structures, and enhancing innovation quality to promote enterprises' new quality productive forces. Heterogeneity analyses indicate that digital transformation has stronger positive effects on new quality productive forces among state-owned enterprises, nonlarge enterprises, organizations with high debt financing costs, and those with low information disclosure. Additional analysis reveals that enterprise digital transformation has peer effects and that the peer effect of digital transformation significantly enhances enterprises' new quality productive forces. This research broadens the microlevel understanding of new quality productive forces and provides policy recommendations for the governmental promotion of new quality productive force initiatives.
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