Heterogeneity Of Senior Management Team And Enterprise Innovation

Innovation is the primary driving force for development of the country,especially in the post-epidemic era,the real economy needs to recover and revive,and innovation is a necessary path for enterprises.The members of the executive team at the decision-making and executive levels of a company have an important influence on corporate innovation.Most of the existing studies on the influence of executive team heterogeneity on corporate innovation focus on the dimensions of age,academic background,and overseas background,but there are fewer studies on the influence of academic background heterogeneity,functional background heterogeneity,tenure heterogeneity,and gender heterogeneity on corporate innovation.Meanwhile,due to the existence of principal-agent problem,the interests of the executive team members and the owners of the firm are different.Equity incentives can alleviate the conflict of principal-agent and make the executive team members pay more attention to the long-term development of the firm while satisfying their own interest maximization,so that they can make decisions that are more conducive to corporate innovation.In view of this,this paper examines the relationship between executive team heterogeneity,equity incentives and corporate innovation from the perspective of executive team heterogeneity by selecting academic background heterogeneity,functional background heterogeneity,tenure heterogeneity and gender heterogeneity.Based on top echelon theory,branding theory,principal-agent theory and innovation theory,the paper selects 8,147 data of A-share listed companies in China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen markets from 2015 to 2020,except for real estate and finance,meanwhile uses SPSS 16.0 to analyze and study the impact of executive team heterogeneity on corporate innovation,while using equity incentives as a moderating variable for in-depth analysis.In further empirical studies,the data were subdivided into different studies considering the nature of property rights,industry attributes and equity incentive instruments.Finally,the following main conclusions are drawn:(1)academic background heterogeneity,functional background heterogeneity and gender heterogeneity significantly promote corporate innovation,and tenure heterogeneity significantly inhibits corporate innovation;(2)equity incentives positively moderate the effects of academic background heterogeneity and functional background heterogeneity on corporate innovation,negatively moderate the effects of gender heterogeneity on corporate innovation,and have no significant moderating effect on the effects of tenure heterogeneity on corporate innovation;(3)compared with high-tech enterprises,the effect of executive team heterogeneity on corporate innovation is more significant in non-high-tech enterprises,and the moderating effect of equity incentives is more significant;(4)compared with state-owned enterprises,the moderating effect of equity incentives on the relationship between executive team heterogeneity and corporate innovation is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises;(5)in enterprises using restricted stock trading,the relationship between executive team heterogeneity and corporate innovation is more significant.The innovations of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects:(1)In terms of academic ideas,we study the factors influencing corporate innovation from the perspective of real enterprises,and truly transform the academic research results into feasible goals of corporate management.(2)In terms of academic viewpoint,this paper believes that the heterogeneity of executive team plays an important role in corporate innovation,and that equity incentives should be used in conjunction with the characteristics of the company itself in order to build a long-term stable executive team that is conducive to corporate innovation.(3)In terms of research variables,most of the previous scholars chose demographic characteristics based on the top echelon theory.Based on this,this paper selects academic background heterogeneity and functional heterogeneity,as well as tenure heterogeneity and gender heterogeneity to further enrich the research on executive team heterogeneity according to the branding theory.Finally,this paper proposes corresponding policy recommendations based on the research findings:(1)in the construction and management of executive teams,executive team heterogeneity should be taken as a consideration dimension to reasonably construct and optimize the structure of executive teams;(2)in combination with enterprises’ own characteristics,internal governance should be strengthened and incentive mechanisms of executive teams should be continuously optimized.This paper enriches the existing research on corporate innovation from the perspective of executive team,and provides a theoretical basis for entity enterprises to address the innovation challenges and solve the practical problems.