Top Management Team Characteristics,Risk Preference And Enterprise Innovation Performance

The basic feature of China’s economic development in the new era is to shift from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality development stage.Comprehensively promoting an innovation-driven growth model is an important foundation and guarantee for implementing China’s new development concept in the new era.In the current new development pattern with the domestic cycle as the main body and the domestic and international dual cycles promoting each other,especially in the context of the continuous increase of foreign technology blockade and the serious control of key core technologies by others,the issue of Chinese enterprises’ innovation ability has received special attention.Even though the country has been increasing its investment in innovation and the main role of Chinese enterprises in innovation has become increasingly prominent,there is still a gap between the innovation output of enterprises and the industrialization rate of innovation achievements compared with developed countries.Improving the innovation performance of enterprises is the key to enhancing the core competitiveness of Chinese enterprises.How to promote the improvement of enterprise innovation performance is a hot topic in the business and academic circles.In the research on enterprise innovation performance,scholars have explored various factors that affect enterprise innovation performance from different perspectives.Among them,the top management team as human capital is increasingly valued by researchers.Scholars have carried out a lot of research on the relationship between top management team characteristics and enterprise innovation performance,and achieved many important results,but there are still large differences or even divergences in many research conclusions.After arranging and analyzing relevant literature,this paper argues that the different choices of researchers on top management team characteristic indicators,research samples and innovative performance measurement methods have had a certain impact on the bias of empirical results.At the same time,in constructing a cross-level study on the influence of the characteristics of the top management team on the innovation performance of the enterprise,the two variables closely related to the innovation behavior of the enterprise and the decision-making process of the top management team-the risk preference of the top management team and the internal and external constraints have not been paid enough attention,and the relevant empirical research needs to be further supplemented.In addition,taking into account factors such as development goals,employment mechanism,governance structure,and external environmental pressure,it is necessary to expand the analysis of enterprises with different property rights and life cycles,affecting the differences in results and mechanisms of action.This not only helps to deepen the research on the influencing factors of enterprise innovation performance,but also has important theoretical and practical guiding significance for Chinese enterprises to optimize the structure of top management team and improve enterprise innovation performance.This paper starts from the upper echelon theory,integrates the innovation theory,the theory of risk preference and the principal-agent theory,and discusses four questions around the core of "the relationship between the top management team characteristics and the enterprise innovation performance" : First,What impact does the top management team characteristics have on the enterprise innovation performance? What are the differences between the effects of homogeneity and heterogeneity on innovation performance? Second,Does the risk preference of the top management team have a mediating effect between the top management team characteristics and the enterprise innovation performance? Do top management team characteristics have an impact on their risk preference? What impact does the risk preference of the top management team have on the enterprise innovation performance? Third,Do internal and external constraints play a moderating role in the influence of top management team characteristics on enterprise innovation performance? Do internal and external constraints moderate the impact of top management team risk preference on enterprise innovation performance? Does a moderated mediating effect hold? Fourth,Are there differences in the impact of top management team characteristics on enterprise innovation performance in different contexts? Are there differences in the impact of top management team characteristics on enterprise innovation performance under different property rights of enterprises? Are there differences in the impact of top management team characteristics on enterprise innovation performance in different enterprise life cycles?After sorting out and commenting on the existing literature and related theories,on the basis of combining theoretical analysis and putting forward research hypotheses,this paper selects A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2019 as research samples,and through empirical demonstration,the following conclusions are obtained: First,The top management team characteristics have a significant impact on enterprise innovation performance,and there are significant differences in the impact of homogeneity characteristics and heterogeneity characteristics on enterprise innovation performance.Specifically,the average age of the top management team inhibits corporate innovation performance,while age heterogeneity promotes enterprise innovation performance.The average education level of the top management team promotes enterprise innovation performance,and the heterogeneity of education level inhibits enterprise innovation performance.The average tenure of the top management team promotes the enterprise innovation performance,and the heterogeneity of tenure has no significant inhibitory effect on enterprise innovation performance.Gender heterogeneity of top management team inhibits enterprise innovation performance.The ratio of technical R&D background and overseas background of the top management team promotes enterprise innovation performance,and the heterogeneity of occupational background inhibits enterprise patent applications and promotes enterprise R&D investment.Second,Risk preference plays a mediating role in the influence of top management team characteristics on enterprise innovation performance.The top management team characteristics significantly affect the top management team risk preference,and the risk preference significantly positively affects the enterprise innovation performance.The top management team characteristics affect the enterprise innovation performance through risk preference.Third,Internal and external constraints play a moderating role in the influence of top management team characteristics on enterprise innovation performance.Internal constraints positively moderate the impact of risk preference on enterprise innovation performance.There is a moderated mediating effect.Internal constraints moderate the mediation of risk preference between top management team characteristics and innovation performance by positively regulating the impact of risk preference on innovation performance.External constraints negatively moderate the impact of risk preference on enterprise innovation performance.There is a moderated mediating effect.External constraints moderate the mediation of risk preference between top management team characteristics and innovation performance by negatively regulating the impact of risk preference on innovation performance.Fourth,There are differences in the influence of the top management team characteristics on enterprise innovation performance in different situations.In non-state-owned enterprises,more top management team characteristic variables have a significant impact on innovation performance,and the mediating effect of risk preference is more significant.State-owned enterprises are more easily regulated by internal constraints,while non-state-owned enterprises are more easily regulated by external constraints;In the growth and maturity of the enterprise,the top management team characteristics have a significant impact on innovation performance,risk preference plays a significant mediating role,and internal and external constraints play a significant moderating role.During the enterprise recession period,the influence of the top management team characteristics on the enterprise innovation performance is poor.The innovations of this paper are as follows: First,The theoretical model of top management team characteristics-risk preference-enterprise innovation performance is constructed,and the influence process of the top management team characteristics on the enterprise innovation performance is discussed from the perspective of incomplete rationality,the importance of the psychological variables of the top management team is clarified,and the internal mechanism of the top management team characteristics affecting the innovation performance is revealed.This paper analyzes the "black box" of the role between the top management team characteristics and the enterprise innovation performance,and makes an important expansion of the existing research results.Second,The internal and external constraints are integrated into the research framework of the top management team characteristics affecting the enterprise innovation performance.The establishment of the mediation model of the internal and external constraints,deepened the understanding of the mediating role of risk preference,revealed the moderation path of internal and external constraints,found the importance of restraint mechanism in influencing the innovative behavior of top management team,which made an important expansion of the cross-level research based on the upper echelon theory.Third,By analyzing the differences in the top management team characteristics affecting the enterprise innovation performance under different enterprise property rights and enterprise life cycle conditions,we explored multi-level research situations and expanded the scope of explanation of the relationship between risk preference and internal and external constraints affecting the top management team characteristics and innovation performance from a contingency perspective,which makes the research conclusion have stronger practical guiding significance.Fourth,This paper comprehensively examines the homogeneity and heterogeneity of the characteristics of the top management team,and the measurement of innovation performance includes two dimensions of input and output,which constructs the impact of the top management team characteristics on the enterprise innovation performance from a more comprehensive perspective.The research framework provides richer empirical evidence for the study of the impact mechanism of enterprise innovation performance.