Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Executive Team Heterogeneity On Firm Innovation Performance

Although Chinese family enterprises have made remarkable achievements since the reform,with the change of economic development stage and enterprise life cycle,the traditional family business model has been unable to adapt to the current market environment.In order to reconstruct core competitiveness and ensure long-term development,family enterprises have introduced professional manager in an attempt to stimulate their own innovation vitality.However,the effect of "de-family" of different enterprises is quite different.This has also triggered intense discussions in the academic circle.In the research on relevant issues,scholars mainly focus on how to design incentive mechanisms to alleviate principal-agent conflicts(such as equity incentive and salary incentive),and ignore the possible impact of executive characteristics on the behavior of family enterprises.Furthermore,Although the research on the characteristics of top management team and firm innovation performance has been fruitful,it is always limited by the "black box" and lacks a systematic analysis of its internal mechanism.In addition,in the unique context of family business,family involvement is an indispensable factor in the study of family business behavior.Therefore,will the heterogeneity of senior management team promote the improvement of innovation performance of family firms?Is there any difference in the impact of different types of heterogeneity on the innovation performance of family firms? What is the internal mechanism of heterogeneity affecting family firm innovation? How do family firms with different levels of family involvement react to different types of heterogeneity? None of this is clear.To solve the above problems,this paper divides the heterogeneity of executive team into tenure heterogeneity,career experience heterogeneity and education level heterogeneity.Based on the high-ladder team theory,this paper combines the dual innovation,information decision making,structural hole and other theories,and incorporates the dual innovation balance as an intermediary and the innovation performance of enterprises to build a relatively complete research framework in order to investigate the theoretical mechanism of the heterogeneity of the top management team to leverage the firm’s innovation.At the same time,considering the boundary conditions,this paper takes family involvement as a contingency factor and analyzes the differences and similarities in the role of heterogeneity of senior management teams in firms with different levels of family involvement based on the perspective of management autonomy.In the model test,a total of 225 observed values of 75 listed manufacturing family enterprises from 2017 to 2019 were selected as research samples.With the help of Python,stata16.0 and other tools,the relationship between the heterogeneity of senior management team and enterprise technological innovation was deeply studied through content analysis,empirical analysis and other experimental methods.Through theoretical analysis and empirical test,this paper mainly draws the following conclusions:First,the heterogeneity of the executive team can indeed promote the improvement of the enterprise’s innovation performance.The heterogeneity of the executive team’s tenure,professional experience and education level all effectively promote the dual innovation balance and technological innovation behavior of the family firm.On the one hand,the multiple ways of thinking of differentiated senior management teams can significantly improve the quality of innovation decisions;on the other hand,heterogeneity adds resources and information to senior management teams to assist the formulation of innovation strategies.Second,the heterogeneity of the senior management team can avoid the errors in the innovation decision-making of the enterprise,so that both exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation modes are paid full attention,so that the enterprise can realize the organic balance of dual innovation,improve the efficiency of the enterprise’s technological innovation and promote the improvement of the enterprise’s innovation performance.Therefore,for family firms,the heterogeneity of executive team tenure,professional experience and education level all have a promoting effect on firm innovation performance mediated by the dual innovation balance.Third,as a unique symbol of family enterprises,family involvement not only preserves social emotional wealth,but also has an impact on the management autonomy of the executive team.Too high level of family involvement will inhibit the positive promoting effect of the heterogeneity of the executive team on the enterprise’s technological innovation behavior,which is not conducive to the implementation of innovation strategy.Based on the analytical logic of "Heterogeneity of tenure,career experience and education level of top management team--dual innovation balance--innovation performance",this paper improves the research on the relationship between heterogeneity of top management team and enterprise innovation performance,which has theoretical and practical value to a certain extent,which is embodied in the following aspects: First,this paper divides the heterogeneity of executive team into the heterogeneity of tenure,professional experience and education level,and discusses the impact of introducing professional managers on the innovation performance of family firms from a micro perspective,which expands the research perspective and enriches the existing empirical research results on the relationship between executive team heterogeneity and firm innovation performance.Secondly,based on the high-ladder team theory,this paper takes the dual innovation balance as the intermediary variable and introduces the moderating variable to build a relatively complete research framework on the impact of the heterogeneity of top executive team on firm innovation performance,and opens the black box of the impact of the heterogeneity of top executive team on firm innovation performance.Finally,with family involvement as the entry point,this paper identifies the situational factors that affect the behavior of the executive team to promote the technological innovation of the family firm,and expands the research understanding on the boundary conditions of the heterogeneity of the executive team in the context of the family firm.