Abstract:

This paper examines the impact of digital innovation capability of private enterprises on the depth and breadth of targeted poverty alleviation. From the perspective of resource allocation theory, digital innovation capability creates abundant reproducible, repeatable, and iterative digital resources, which break through the limitations of resource scarcity and depletability in traditional theories. Hence, private enterprises are engaged by digital innovation capability to deeply combine digital resources with the characteristics of poverty-stricken areas and people, and participate in local “blood-making” poverty alleviation, thereby further increasing the poverty alleviation depth. Meanwhile, digital innovation ability enables private enterprises to put similar digital resources into different areas, and derive different poverty alleviation methods according to divergent needs of certain areas, thereby further increasing the poverty alleviation breadth. Data are collected from multiple databases (i.e., CSMAR, CNINFO, and Incopat), and a panel population average effect regression is conducted on the final dataset of 8840 observations of 2259 listed companies from 2016 to 2020. The empirical analyses prove that the digital innovation capability enhances both poverty alleviation depth and poverty alleviation breadth. In addition, the empirical results demonstrate that industrial concentration enhances the positive effect of digital innovation capability in both the depth and breadth of poverty alleviation. Political connections strengthen the positive effect of digital innovation capability on poverty alleviation depth, while lessening its positive effect on poverty alleviation breadth. Unlike previous case studies that investigated poverty alleviation of particular enterprises, this paper empirically draws an empirically-based conclusion with high generalization. Digital innovation capability promotes private enterprises to invest extensively and deeply in targeted poverty alleviation, and this paradigm enables private enterprises to implement prosocial practice as “folding a branch for the elderly” rather than “carrying Mount Tai in arms to surpass North Sea.”

Key words:

private enterprise, digital innovation capability, resource allocation, poverty alleviation depth, poverty alleviation breadth

摘要：

民营企业的数字创新能力可能影响其精准扶贫深度与广度。区别于传统资源配置理论中定义的消耗性、稀缺性资源，数字创新能力为企业创造的数字资源则具备高度可再现性、可重复迭代更新等特征。民营企业能够将相关数字资源与贫困地区、贫困人口的特征深度结合，真正参与到针对当地的“造血式”扶贫中，进而提高其在精准扶贫方面的投入深度。同时，数字创新能力使民营企业得以将相似的数字技术投放到不同情况的贫困地区，根据当地实际扶贫需要设计不同的扶贫方式，从而提高企业精准扶贫的投入广度。综合国泰安上市公司扶贫数据库、巨潮网上市公司年度报告和社会责任报告文本以及Incopat专利数据库等多个数据源，对2016~2020年2 259家上市公司的8840条观测值进行面板混合效应回归，发现企业数字创新能力增强了扶贫深度与扶贫广度。实证研究结果表明：行业集中度提高了民营企业数字创新能力对精准扶贫深度与广度的积极作用；政治联系增强了民营企业数字创新能力对精准扶贫深度的积极影响，但限制了企业将数字资源分配到更多地区的潜力。不同于以往只考察个别企业的扶贫案例研究，本文通过实证研究得到具有普适性意义的结论：数字创新能力促进民营企业广泛而深入地投入精准扶贫；数字创新范式使共同富裕的社会实践对民营企业而言不再是“挟太山以超北海”，而是转化为“为长者折枝”。

关键词:

民营企业, 数字创新能力, 资源配置, 扶贫深度, 扶贫广度