A Study Of Sustainable Corporation Growth Under The Hypothesis Of Self-Assertiveness Demands

Chinese enterprises are incomparable either by size or by influence with those of western countries, but they meet unprecedented opportunities in this period of Chinese rise. Modern enterprise management theories and experiences have had a history of hundreds years, however not all of them could be appropriate for Chinese enterprises. In this paper, we propose a corporate growth and management theory based on a single assumption self-assertiveness demands, which analyzes human demands and behaviors to explore a sustainable way of corporate growth.The tendency of self-assertiveness of cognitive subjects produces rigid demands, which we call self-assertiveness demands. They are originated from the comparison in the dimension of time and space, based on the subjective judgment of cognitive subjects themselves, which are beyond rational economic demands. In hypothesis of self-assertiveness demands, we do not assume abstract human nature, nor define goodness or evil, but directly analyze human behavior by self-assertiveness demands. They inspire cognitive subject (individual) advancing their abilities, and producing desires of changing the status by making full use of their ration, thus improving the efficiency throughout the community. Self-assertiveness demands are the essence of all kinds of growth miracle, whether it is the continuous development of countries, the rapid expansion of enterprises or the fast enhancement of personal capacity. However, differences in experiences, environment and any other multidimensional complexity bring about divergence of cognitive and perspective, and would make estrangement between the cognitive subjects and even hostility. This kind of cognitive blocking is an adverse effect of self-assertiveness demands.Another concept of sedimentary resource is proposed to describe the resources that are necessary for the operation of enterprises. We believe that enterprise can be also seen as a cognitive subject, whose healthy growth should be accomplished on sedimentary resources, and nourished by additional emerged resources to fulfill self-assertiveness demands. We summarize four forms of additional emerged resources, the expansion and occupation of new markets, learning and innovation, overdrawing from the future, mergers and restructuring. The first one includes expansion of product and brand, etc., which is the most direct and effective response on sales revenues; learning and innovation contains technological innovation and management innovation, which is a relatively slow, but a continuous way; overdrawing from the future could invest as short-term or long-term investment through a variety of financial instruments; mergers and restructuring is to acquiring prime assets or stripping toxic assets changing the organization of enterprise.The sustainable growth of an enterprise concerns on conquering capturing additional emerging resources, and managing cognitive blocking. Eternally, the manager should recognize the comparative advantage of the enterprise, and capture one or more additional emerging resources to fulfill their employees’ self-assertiveness demands; and internally, the manager should unite all employees’ cognitive goal by weakening the negative effect of their cognitive blocking.Expansion of enterprise’s scale can reduce costs through scale effect, and enhance the ability of enterprise resource configuration, which performance in all aspects of the R&D, financing, advertising, brand effect and so on. However, along with the increasing of the number of employees, the additional emerging resources reduce on average for each individual. Furthermore, the complexity of organizational structure brought by the expansion will deepen the internal cognitive blocking. Comparing entrepreneurial enterprises with multinational corporations, although the formers are vulnerable in most of aspects, like human resources, technology, capital and so on, but they also have two advantages: less employees need less additional emerging resources; for personal management, with bloated structure, complex delivery mechanism and strict regulations, the goals between employers and employees are highly united, so the management of cognitive blocking will be easier and more efficient.