Research On The Impact Of Employee External Pay Gap On Enterprise Risk Taking

The report of the 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasizes the need to accelerate the transformation of production mode from factor driven to technological innovation driven.Enterprise risk-taking behavior is not only beneficial for enhancing enterprise value,but also for promoting the progress of science and technology.However,in the context of economic globalization,factors such as Sino US trade friction and the COVID-19 have increased the uncertainty of the external environment,and the willingness of enterprises to take risks has significantly decreased.Employees are important stakeholders and actual executors of risk decisions in the enterprise.Their work attitude and abilities can affect the enterprise’s judgment and decision-making on risk projects,thereby affecting the level of enterprise risk taking.Therefore,fully leveraging the subjective initiative of employees is undoubtedly a problem that enterprises must consider when making venture capital investments.Salary is the most direct and effective way for enterprises to motivate employees.With the development of information technology and the improvement of the market economy system,employees can freely flow in the talent market.They will compare their salary with the industry average and use the comparison results as the basis for their labor investment.Therefore,the external salary gap among employees will directly or indirectly affect the level of enterprise risk taking,thereby affecting the quality of enterprise development.In view of this,this paper first summarizes the relevant literature on external compensation gap and enterprise risk taking,based on which,taking the risk decision implementation feedback and enterprise investment constraints as the logical starting point,and combining the compensation incentive theory,resource dependence theory,social comparison theory and stakeholder related theory,this paper theoretically analyzes the relationship between employees’ external compensation gap and enterprise risk taking,and puts forward competitive assumptions.Secondly,this article takes A-share listed companies in China from 2010 to 2019 as samples and constructs a regression model to test the main hypothesis.On this basis,this article conducts a sample discussion from three aspects: the nature of enterprise property rights,internal salary gap,and enterprise technical characteristics,in order to examine the differences in the impact of employee external salary gap on enterprise risk taking among different enterprises.Finally,this article explores the role path of employee external salary gap on enterprise risk taking from the perspective of enterprise innovation,and empirically tests the intermediary transmission mechanism of enterprise innovation efficiency.The following conclusions are drawn in this article:(1)There is a positive correlation between the external salary gap of employees and the level of enterprise risk taking.A higher external salary gap can attract more outstanding talents to join the company,motivate employees to work hard,reduce turnover rates,stabilize the employee team,and provide strong guarantees for the smooth progress of high-risk projects,thereby enhancing the company’s risk appetite and improving the company’s risk bearing level;(2)The positive correlation between employee external salary gap and enterprise risk taking level is more significant in state-owned enterprises,enterprises with small internal salary gap,and technology-based enterprises;(3)The efficiency of enterprise innovation plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between employee external salary gap and enterprise risk taking,that is,the employee external salary gap can improve the efficiency of enterprise innovation,thereby enhancing the level of enterprise risk taking.In addition,this paper conducts a robustness test on the research conclusions by replacing explanatory variables and explained variables,adding fixed effect models,adding nonlinear regression models,and conducts an endogenous test on the research conclusions through lag terms and instrumental variables.The results under different tests are consistent with the previous conclusions,indicating that the research conclusions in this paper are robust and reliable.The main innovation of this article is reflected in the following points: Firstly,the study expands the economic consequences of external salary gaps among employees.At present,domestic scholars have paid low attention to ordinary employees,and a small amount of research on external salary gaps mainly focuses on executives.This article innovatively takes employees as the research perspective,enriching relevant research in the field of employee compensation.Secondly,it expands the influencing factors of enterprise risk taking.The existing literature mainly studies the impact of executives’ willingness to take risks and the ability of enterprises to obtain resources on the level of enterprise risk taking,neglecting the important role of employees in risk taking activities.This article takes employees as the research perspective and supplements the research on the impact of risk decision execution factors on enterprise risk taking.Thirdly,from the perspective of enterprise innovation efficiency,this study conducted an in-depth analysis of the impact path of employee external salary gap on enterprise risk taking,providing theoretical support for enterprises to develop reasonable salary systems to promote the improvement of enterprise innovation efficiency and risk taking level.