Absorbed Slack, Top Management Team Ties and Military-to-Civilian Activities in Military Enterprises

Based on open innovation theory and agency theory, this paper analyzes the impact of absorbed slack on different modes of military-to-civilian activities (MCAs) and the moderating effect of top management team (TMT) ties. It employs empirical data of A-share listed companies of China’s ten military industry groups from 2007 to 2019 to test the main effects and moderating effects of the above-mentioned factors. The results indicate that the absorbed slack of military enterprises has an inverted U-shaped relationship with inbound MCAs, while their absorbed slack facilitates outbound MCAs; TMT ties positively moderate the inverted U-shaped relationship between the absorbed slack and inbound MCAs; that is, with the increase of TMT ties, the inflection point of the inverted U-shaped curve moves to the right. In contrast, TMT ties have no significant moderating impact on the relationship between the absorbed slack and outbound MCAs.