| With the improvement of social network theory and relevant empirical research,people gradually realize that social relations have an important influence in many fields of economic activities and financial markets.As an important transmission channel of knowledge,information and resources and the basis of cooperation and exchange,social networks affect the information collection before decision-making,the form,implementation,and improvement in decision-making implementation,as well as the feedback and dynamic adjustment after decision-making implementation.For firms,the members of the board of directors cross serve among the boards of directors of different companies,forming interlocked directors.Interlocked directors link up the firms they serve,forming a huge social network between firms,called board social networks.According to social network theory and resource dependence theory,board social networks help firms obtain various resources in a more timely manner,including tangible resources(monetary resources,human resources,etc.)and intangible resources(knowledge,information,reputation,etc.).From the perspective of learning effects,boards can improve the governance ability of the boards,improve the supervision effects of the boards on the management,strengthen the identification ability of projects with positive net present value,help the management implement various projects efficiently and correctly,and promote firm value.From the perspective of reputation effects,board social networks accelerate the transmission of information.Both positive and negative signals of boards accelerate the transmission and expand the scope of influence through board social networks.As reputation damage is a punishment mechanism to urge the board to better perform its functions of supervision and consultation,board social networks can improve the reputation awareness of boards.With the development of economic globalization,the increase of international capital flow,and the gradual expansion of international market,Chinese firms are experiencing unprecedented opportunities.However,in the face of opportunities,there are also various challenges: the complex market environment and fierce market competition have higher requirements for the level of corporate governance;The promotion of industrialization and informatization and the deepening of opening to the outside world require enterprises to actively innovate and improve their risk-taking level to maintain the sustainability of competitiveness;As a form of principal-agent problem,executives with the tendency of risk aversion lead to the lack of willingness to bear risks and tend to implement conservative business decisions.In summary,firms in China have long had the practical problems of low governance level,insufficient innovation awareness and weak risk-taking level.The resource advantages brought by board social networks can promote the board to actively and effectively perform the functions of supervision,consultation and advice from the two aspects of enhancing ability and awareness,which may help firms alleviate the principal-agent problem,strengthen innovation ability and improve the level of risk-taking.Therefore,starting from the supervision function and advisory function of the boards,this study explores the effects,mechanism and economic outcome of the board social networks on firm monitoring efficiency,innovation activities and risk-taking level.The structure of this paper is as follows:Chapter 1 is introduction.This chapter introduces the research background,research significance,research contents and methods,as well as the contribution and content structure of the research.Chapter 2 is literature review.First of all,this chapter defines the concept of research object.Second,this chapter combs the relevant literature from five aspects:(1)the functions of boards;(2)Directors’ social relations;(3)Characteristics of boards and monitoring efficiency;(4)Characteristics of boards and innovative decision-making;(5)Characteristics of boards and firm risk-taking.Finally,this chapter summarizes and comments on the combed literature review.Chapter 3 is the theoretical framework of the influence of board social networks on corporate decision-making.This chapter takes board social networks as the starting point,takes monitoring efficiency,innovation activities and risk-taking level caused by corporate decision-making as the foothold,and combs the theoretical basis of the relationship between director networks and corporate decision-making,including social network theory,principal-agent theory and resource dependence theory.In addition,this chapter also discusses the mechanism of board social network influence,including learning effects,reputation effects and peer effects.Chapter 4 is the empirical analysis of the impact of board social networks on monitoring efficiency.Starting from the supervision function of the board,this chapter studies the impacts of the board social networks formed by interlocked directors on monitoring efficiency to enterprise executives.The main findings of this chapter are as follows: first,boards strengthens turnover-performance sensitivity;Second,when the internal and external governance level of the company is low or the principal-agent problem is prominent,the impacts of the board social networks on CEO turnover-performance sensitivity is more significant;Third,the propensity score matching method and instrumental variable method are used to alleviate the possible endogenous problems,and the results still support the board social networks positively related to CEO turnover-performance sensitivity.The above results show that the board social network can effectively improve monitoring efficiency,replace CEOs with poor performance in time,and safeguard the interests of corporate shareholders.Chapter 5 is the empirical analysis of the impacts of board social network on innovation decision-making.First,from the perspective of the advisory function of boards,this chapter finds that there are peer effects on innovation decision-making among firms with board social network relationship.This effect will not only affect the innovation investment of firms,but also affect the innovation quantity and innovation quality of enterprises.Second,this chapter finds that peer effects of innovation decision-making is caused by the preferential learning mechanism,that is,the treatment firms will learn from their peer firms with voice,good innovation quality and high governance level,such as industry leading firms,firms with high innovation quality,non-state-owned firms and firms with high information transparency.Third,in addition to learning mechanism,the peer effects of firm innovation also have a certain strategic nature.When the industry competition is more intense or the uncertainty of economic policy is strong,the innovation peer effects of the board social network of the treatment firms is more significant.Fourth,in terms of the economic outcome of the peer effects,this chapter finds that the stronger the peer effects of innovation investment,the better the performance of the companies.Chapter 6 is the empirical analysis of the impact of board social networks on firm risk-taking.This chapter explores the impacts of board social networks on firm risk-taking.First,this chapter finds that the boards who can obtain more social capital through board social networks are more likely to improve the level of firm risk-taking.Using mediation analysis and path analysis,this chapter finds that the mechanism for firms to improve risk-taking is to make high-risk investment decisions(including increasing innovation investment and increasing M&A frequency)and financing decisions(including reducing cash holdings and increasing leverage).Second,well-connected boards can make better use of its information advantages and be better at making risk-taking decisions that play a positive role in increasing firm performance,rather than blindly pursuing high risk and high profit.Third,this chapter also finds that the board social network is more likely to promote the improvement of firm risk-taking than systematic risk-taking;For non-state-owned enterprises,the board social network has a greater impact on firm risk-taking;The board social network formed by executive directors has a more significant impact than that formed by independent directors.Chapter 7 is the research conclusions,suggestions and prospects.This chapter summarizes the research content of the full text and puts forward the research conclusions,and takes this as the basis and basis to put forward policy suggestions beneficial to economic and social progress and firm development.Finally,this chapter looks forward to the potential development direction of relevant research fields in the future.Combined with the research content,the innovations and contributions of this paper are reflected in the following points:First of all,this paper provides new research evidence for the influence of board social network on corporate behavior decision-making.The existing research on the impact of the characteristics of the board on firm decision-making generally focuses on the perspective of the independence and diversity of the board,while ignoring the important role of the knowledge,information and resources of the board on its functions.As an important social capital of the board,the board social network can broaden the access of the board to tangible and intangible resources.In addition,previous studies on the impact of board social network on corporate behavior mainly focused on daily business performance,M&A performance,investment efficiency,easing financing constraints and so on.From the perspective of firm decision-making,there is little literature to study the impact of board social networks on monitoring efficiency,innovation investment and firm risk-taking based on the dual functions of board supervision and advisory advice.In order to enrich relevant literature and fill the gaps of existing research,this paper deeply studies the effects,mechanisms and economic outcomes of board social networks on monitoring efficiency,innovation investment and risk-taking level.In addition,the conclusion of this paper affirms the positive role of board social network in transmitting knowledge,information and resources among firms.Second,this paper enriches the research on the factors of board monitoring efficiency.Jensen and Warner(1988)suggest that whether to replace incompetent and underperforming CEOs in time reflects monitoring efficiency of firms.The findings of this paper are helpful to expand the research on the board performing the monitoring function,and then affect CEO turnover-performance sensitivity.The existing research on the factors of CEO turnover-performance sensitivity mostly focuses on the structure of boards,the characteristics of institutional ownership,the personal characteristics of CEOs and the external environment.The evidence of this paper shows that the position of the board in the board social network is also an important factor affecting CEO turnover-performance sensitivity.At the same time,this paper provides a new reference for the board on how to better perform the monitoring function of board social networks.Third,this paper expands the research on the peer effects of firm decision-making under the board social network.firms with similar enterprise characteristics,business environment or specific connections will produce the convergence of decision-making,which is called peer effects.From the research content,the existing research on the peer effects mostly focuses on the research on capital market investment and financing structure.From the perspective of research methods,a few literatures related to the peer effects of innovation investment are based on the peer effects of firms within the industry when constructing the same group.However,there are operational commonalities among "same industry" enterprises,such as producing similar products,providing similar services,profit model and technological development direction.This series of similarities naturally promote the consistency of firm decision-making.Therefore,the study of the peer effects of "same industry" has certain endogenous defects.In order to make up for this deficiency,this paper innovatively uses the relationship generated by the board social network to study the peer effects of enterprise innovation investment,innovation quantity and innovation quality,as well as comprehensively and systematically analyzes the peer effects of innovation investment.In addition,there are more competitive relationships among enterprises in the same industry,so it is difficult to test the learning mechanism among enterprises in the same group.Starting with the information resource advantages brought by the board social network to enterprises,this paper investigates the learning mechanism of preferential learning and the strategic mechanism of timing in the peer effects.In terms of economic outcomes,the peer effects of innovation investment promote the promotion of firm value.Fourth,from the perspective of monitoring efficiency and resource advantages brought by the board social network,this paper expands the research on the factors of firm risk-taking.Risk bearing reflects the willingness and ability of enterprises to bear the uncertainty of project income in order to improve performance and promote development.Specifically,most of the existing studies on the board social network focus on the performance of enterprises,such as M&A performance,investment efficiency,IPO performance,firm performance and so on.At present,the literature on the factors of firm risk-taking decision-making mostly starts with the risk preference of management.This study confirms the impact of board social networks on firm risk-taking,and systematically discusses how firm investment and financing decision-making acts as the impact path between board social networks and firm risk-taking by using mediation analysis method and path analysis method.In addition,this study also found that the social capital provided by the board social network helps the board to choose risk projects,improve the risk return rate,and then promote the improvement of operation performance.The research results provide a novel idea for analyzing the economic outcomes of firm risk-taking. |
