公司興業投資決策之研究

Abstract

在變化快速的環境中，廠商為維繫成長動力，必須不斷學習新的能力，並且探索新的產品、市場或技術。在此探索的過程中，投資新創事業是一種日益普遍的工具。由於對新創事業投資存在多種形式，我們將企業興業投資(Corporate Venturing Investment)定義為廠商對初創公司的股權投資，而不包含在廠商內部發展的研究計劃。本論文即以此漸受學術界與實務界所關注的活動為研究主題，探究在此一高風險的投資情境中，廠商如何作成投資決策。在理論方面，我們採用了承諾續擴觀點與實質選擇權觀點，同時考量認知面與經濟面的因素對於決策的影響。本論文主要包含二篇相關的研究，其內容概述如下： 本論首先著眼於經理人的認知偏誤對新創事業續承諾續擴行為的影響。基於過去的文獻分析，我們檢驗三項經常被引用的認知影響因素—沉沒成本(sunk cost)、控制錯覺(illusion of control)及自我申辨(self-justification)，以上述三項認知因素推導出影響續投資決策的前置因素。經由時序橫斷面(time-series and cross sectional)資料的分析，我們發現沈沒成本、被投資公司前期初次上市櫃之數目、投資損益揭露、焦點廠商(focal firm)是否為創始投資者對廠商次期的投資數額有正向的影響，但是除了作為創始投資者外，當出現投資呈現嚴重損失時，上述變數的影響都會消失。 延伸前述研究，本論文引進理性模型而加入實質選擇權觀點，而同時採用二理論—實質選擇權觀點與承諾續擴觀點分析廠商續投資決策。基於此二觀點，我們主張廠面對高風險的決策情境，會同時參酌廠商內部與外在環境的訊號而作出續投資決策。從承諾續擴觀點，我們提出三項內部訊號—負向回饋(negative feedback)、沈沒成本(sunk cost)、過去整體投資績效，會促使廠商增加投資，而從實質選擇權觀點，我們指出二項會促使廠商增加投資的外部訊號—預期市場成長與同行的增資行為。我們進一步指出廠商的策略導向(低成本或差異化)會影響廠商對二項訊號的採用權重。低成本導向的廠商會多採外部訊號而差異化導向廠商多採用內部訊號。 理論方面，本論文對承諾續擴觀點的貢獻在於釐清該觀點的適用邊界(boundary)，證實在重度負向回饋之下，由認知相關變數之影響力會受到抑制甚至消失。而廠商的策略導向亦會影響認知相關因素的重要程度。而對於實質選擇權觀點，本論文以差異化為策略導向的廠商傾向以實質選擇權的思維進行續投資決策而對於廠商層級因素對該觀點的適用性提供新的洞見。 至於在實證方面，過去多數承諾提續擴的實證研究多以個案研究或實驗渢為之，本論文以量化實地研究(field study)為該理論提供了普遍適用性(generalizability)的證據。此外，就實質選擇權理論而言，本論文則提供了選擇權執行(options exercising)決策形成的實證證據。

Rapid technology change and increasing competition brings up a great amount of uncertainty to established firms in their pursuit of sustainable competitive advantages. Constantly monitoring these uncertainties and proactively exploring new opportunities of value creation become imperative to their achievement of continuous growth. Corporate venturing is such an activity performed by incumbents as a technology search vehicle. Accordingly, the dissertation focuses on this strategic activity attractive to both practitioners and academia and explores how firms make their corporate venturing investment decisions. For investigating this research inquiry, we mainly draw on the escalating commitment perspective and bring in real options reasoning perspectives to serve as complementary lens. In the following, we will provide a brief sketch on the two studies included in this dissertation. The first study presents in chapter 3, we focus on the subsequent investment decisions regarding corporate venturing projects. This study investigates the impact of managers’ cognitive bias on corporate venturing investment decisions with a particular focus on a firm’s escalation of commitment to a losing course of action. Specifically, based upon three sources of cognitive bias, namely, sunk costs, illusion of control and self-justification, this study identifies antecedents of the escalation behavior. Our longitudinal empirical analyses, based on corporate venturing investments made by listed Taiwanese IT companies, shows that sunk costs, the number of initial public offerings by the firm in previous years, disclosure of investment performance and whether the firm joined the initial funding of the new venture are positively correlated to a firm’s escalating commitment to an investment with a mild negative feedback. When severe negative feedback is encountered, however, the impact of these antecedents is alleviated or even disappears. Implications to managers and suggestions for future research are also discussed. The second study presents in Chapter 4 addressing how a firm makes its sequential investment decisions under uncertainty within an corporate venturing project. Based on two theoretical perspectives of decision making, real options reasoning and escalating commitment, we argue that decision makers tend to rely upon both external and internal sources of signal as decision references to take their sequential move in order to cope with embedded uncertainty. We therefore postulate a conceptual framework encompassing these two angles and suggest that both external signals, including expected market growth and peer group firm’s action and internal signals including negative feedback, sunk costs and past investment performance of the investing company would influence a firm’s subsequent investment decisions. To evaluate these hypotheses, we propose an econometric analysis within the context of corporate venturing investments made by Taiwanese IT hardware manufacturers. Furthermore, we examine the relationship between a firm’s strategic orientation and its adoption of differential decision perspectives. From these two studies, we can advance our understanding of commitment escalation by refining the theoretical boundary and contrasting it with other perspectives. We identified severeness of negative feedback as a significant contingency that can nullify the influence of cognitive heuristics. We also identified that a firm’s cost orientation will reduce the influence from escalation bias. Another theory this dissertation attempts to contribute is real options reasoning. Our study suggests decision makers do either intuitively or explicitly use ROR when making investment choices under uncertainty. Furthermore, a firm’s strategic orientation (i.e., the emphasis on cost or differentiation) will moderate managers’ inclination of adopting ROR when making strategic decisions. This dissertation research also hopes to make contribution to the emerging literature of corporate venturing investments as well. We scrutinize the subsequent investment decisions made by the investing firm and also explore the performance impact on parent firms. By doing so, we may advance our understanding of the CVI decision process through providing a somewhat holistic picture of CVI activities. Overall, on the more general level than we previously pointed, through these two studies, we try to enhance our understanding regarding the impact of uncertainty on a firm’s decision making regarding subsequent investment. This effort enables us to provide managerial suggestions for firms to cope with uncertainty and sustain their future growth.