Study On The Effect Of Female Executives On M&A Strategy Selection

There have been waves of mergers and acquisitions in China recently,but irrational mergers and acquisitions,malicious reorganization and other problems emerge one after another.Therefore,China’s Securities Regulatory Commission officially issued new regulations emphasizing that blind mergers and acquisitions should be avoided and the quality of enterprise mergers and acquisitions should be improved in the process of continuously promoting the market-oriented reform of mergers and acquisitions in 2019.The top management team is the main force of corporate strategic decision-making and has an important impact on corporate M&A decisions,among which gender difference is one of the most obvious characteristics of managers.Compared with male managers,female managers are more risk averse and more conservative and stable in behavior and style.As more women entered the top management team,women accounted for about 32.7 percent of board members and 35.2percent of supervisors in 2010,up from 34.9 percent and 38.2 percent in2020.This shows that women are increasingly recognized for leading and managing businesses.Female executives are taking a more active role in mergers and acquisitions.However,current studies mostly focus on how female executives influence M&A decisions,but ignore whether female executives and their own characteristics have a significant impact on the choice of M&A strategy.Therefore,this thesis will study the influence of female executives on the strategic choice of M&A from the top echelon theory and female care ethics.This thesis selects the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2009 to 2019 as the initial sample,and verifies the hypotheses in this paper by combining theoretical analysis method and empirical test method.The results of research show that: first,in China’s investment market,compared with related mergers and acquisitions,female executives’ participation is positively correlated with mixed mergers and acquisitions;Second,the personal characteristics of female executives(age,educational background and professional background)are negatively correlated with corporate M&A.That is,the older the female executives are,the higher the education level is,and the more people with “output type” professional background,the higher the probability of related M&A is.Thirdly,the results of mediating effect analysis show that the promotion effect of female executives’ participation on mixed M&A strategy is partially realized by risk aversion.This thesis starts with the gender characteristics of senior managers,conducts an empirical study on the choice of M&A strategy,proposes that enterprises should pay attention to the risks brought by M&A strategy when choosing M&A strategy,analyzes their own strength and the supporting conditions required by M&A,so as to ensure the rationality of M&A decision.The empirical conclusion of this paper shows that the company should try its best to select women with suitable age,educational background and professional background into the senior management team,optimize the screening criteria of the female senior management team,introduce talent resources to the greatest extent,give full play to the functions of female senior management,and promote the reasonable merger and acquisition.