| Cost management is an important part in the company’s operating management.Cost stickiness,is generally becoming the important research question of cost management research.The traditional Management Accounting manifests that:there is a linear relationship between costs and volume of business,but in fact,costs is not fully changed symmetrically associated with activity change.Cost stickiness,which means that the costs increase more for an increase in volume of business than they decrease for an equivalent decreases in volume of business.Competitive Strategy is an important part that can’t be ignored by a enterprise.To achieve a competitive advantage,firms explicitly or implicitly pursue a competitive strategy(Porter 1996).The major competitive strategies classified by Porter’s are differentiation and cost leadership(Porter 1980,1996).A body of literature on strategic cost management suggests that the competitive strategy carried out by managers will have a significant impact in the company’s cost,witch will further influence the cost stickness.Strategic positioning affects managers’decisions about resource commitment which will exhibits different adjusting cost,and finally leads to the difference of cost stickiness in different strategies.The propose of the enterprises’ competitive strategies,is to maximize the enterprises’value under the condition of cost minimization,The relationship between business strategy and cost stickiness is very important in the company which influence the results of the competition strategy.The firms’ strategic positioning decide the allocation of resources gained from the regional factor market such as raw material,equipment,human resources and information which also subject to the development of regional factor market.Before making production decisions,market decisions or other management decisions,firms also need to consider the constraint of the outside factor market.How regional factor market influence the cost stickness,and why the influence is difference between different business strategies which are very important for promoting enterprises value.Based on the views of adjusting cost of cost stickness,this thesis investigates how strategic positioning affects managers’ decisions about resource commitment and how the regional factor market influence the adjustment costs in the process of the resource commitment.It is especially important for managers to have an insight into cost behavior,allocate resources properly,improve the company’s production and operation efficiency and achieve target of business strategies.In terms of theoretical significance,firstly,this thesis enriches the empirical evidence on the influencing mechanism of cost stickiness.The causes of cost stickiness include three aspects:adjustment costs,agency problems and managerial expectations aspects.Based on the aspect of adjustment,This thesis investigates the influence of business’ competitive strategies and regional factor market on cost stickiness which will enrich the literatures.Secondly,based on the aspect of adjustment,competitive strategy,the development of regional factor market and cost stickiness are embedded into the same analysis framework in this thesis,which not only broaden the research of cost stickiness but also enrich the combination of the two lines of literature about financial accounting and strategic management accounting.In terms of practical value,firstly,this thesis can strengthenthe understanding of cost behavior and improve the level of cost management.It is better for manager to make the cost budget,operating decision making and cost control according to the rule of cost change to enhance the core competitiveness of the company.Secondly,this can strengthen the relationship between strategic and cost management.Existing researches major investigate the relationship of business’competitive strategies and companies performance,there are few literature study the cost operation management under different business’ competitive strategies.This thesis provide an empirical evidence that reveal the different business,competitive strategies match different cost management system and provide theoretical basis and reference for manager to make cost management decision.Thirdly,it can help company to evaluate the cost stickiness from the outside development of regional factor market.The firms,regional factor market is a significant outside fundamental environment which have an important impact on firms’ resource allocation and will have an impact on the cost stickiness.Research on the development of regional factor market with the cost stickiness using the China listed firms can help firms have a better understanding the influence of the development of regional factor market on cost behavior based on the view of adjustment cost.This can help companies improve the efficiency of the allocation of resources,adapt the development of the market and improve effectiveness of cost management from the outside of development of regional factor market.The research framework of this thesis are as follows:The first part is introduction.This part puts forward the background and significance of the cost stickiness,and defines the research content and objectives,research methods and the innovation points of this thesis.The second part is literature review.This part mainly focuses on three topics,namely competitive strategy,the development of regional factor market and cost stickiness.Through literature review,we can clearly understand the current research status and direction of development in the field,the content of this study,possible innovations,mainly empirical method and variable metric etc,which can lay a solid foundation for the empirical study.The third part is theoretical basis and research hypothesis.This part mainly introduces classical theories such asthe strategic management theory and asset specificity theory,which constructs the theoretical basis of the thesis.Meanwhile,based on the thesetheories,this part will incorporate theoretical background and the deduction of hypothesis about relationship among competitive strategy,the development of regional factor market and cost stickiness.The fourth part is the research design of competitive strategy,the development of regional factor market and cost stickiness.This part based on hypothesis in part three.The thesis modifies the ABJ(2003)model about cost stickiness,defines variables and explains the data sources and the election of sample.The fifth part is the empirical study.This part carries on descriptive statistical analysis and tests the hypothesis.Finally,the thesis will carry out the robustness test to provide more support for the conclusions.The sixth part is research conclusions,limitation and prospects.This part draws a conclusion of the study on the basis of the results and gives the recommendations.Finally,this part points out the deficiencies of this study and the direction of future development.Using the data from Chinese A-share listed companies during 2008 to 2015,we find that,first of all,different competitive strategies will exhibit different cost behavior.The cost stickiness of differentiation strategy is higher than those who choose low-cost strategy.Third,from the concern of the outside developement of regional factor market,we find that the level of development of company’s located regional factor market has positive significant impact on the degree of cost stickiness Finally,we also find that the impacts of regional factor market on cost stickiness are more significant in low-cost strategy companies compared to the differentiation strategy companies.The innovation points of this thesis are as follows:(1)Based on the major competitive strategies classified by Porter’s are differentiation and cost leadership(Porter 1980,1996).This thesis is intended to provide a theoretical basis(The asset specificity theory)for how business’ competitive strategies cause.to the different cost stickiness.(2)Based on the views of adjusting cost of cost stickiness,competitive strategy,the development of regional factor market and cost stickiness are embedded into the same analysis framework in this thesis.This thesis provides empirical evidence that different competitive strategies will exhibit different cost behavior.We also study how the development of company’s located regional factor market influences the degree of cost stickiness in different competitive strategies’companies. |
