高管团队权力不平等对企业创新强度的影响--有调节的中介效应

The Impact of Top Management Team Power Disparity on Firm Innovation Intensity: Moderated Mediating Effect

传统战略研究者认为,高管团队权力不平等会给企业带来负面影响。本研究通过整合组织等级理论和团队断层理论发现,中国文化背景下的高管团队权力不平等也有功能性的一面,即权力不平等可以促进高管团队任务型子群体的产生,进而影响企业创新强度。基于中国沪深两市2007-2012年间1487个高管团队层面及企业层面的数据,本文考察了权力不平等与企业创新强度的关系机制。研究结果表明,高管团队权力不平等会对企业创新强度产生间接促进作用,即权力不平等首先促进较高的任务型断层强度,进而产生较高的企业创新强度。其中,任务型断层强度的中介作用受到了任务型子群体不均衡性的调节,任务型子群体不均衡程度越高,任务型断层强度与企业创新强度的关系越强。研究结果对于高管团队管理及企业创新管理具有借鉴意义。

Researchers in strategic management field have reported that top management teams （TMT） power disparity has significant impacts on top managers＇ attitudes, behaviors, TMT decision processes and firm outcomes. However, these studies have at least three limitations. First, in the limited empirical studies on power disparity, most researchers only focus on the impacts of power disparity on firm or team performance, whereas few focus on the relationship between power disparity and innovation （e.g., innovation intensi- ty）. Second, previous studies cannot explain how power disparity affects team outcomes, which is not helpful for us to understand TMT interactive processes. Third, although traditional strategic researchers believe that TMT power disparity has negative effects on firm outcomes, organizational hierarchy researchers believe that firms in Eastern collectivism culture could benefit more from power disparity; however, few empirical studies was conducted in Chinese culture background. In order to overcome these limitations, the present study focuses on the effect of TMT power disparity on firm innovation intensity in Chinese culture context. Through inte- grating organizational hierarchy theory and team fault-line theory, this study suggests that TMT power disparity has functional effects in Chinese culture context. We propose that power disparity will facilitate the generation of TMT task-oriented subgroups, which in turn affect firm innovation intensity. We collected 1487 TMT and firm data from A-share listed firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2007 to 2012, to examine the relation between power disparity and firm innovation intensity. Results show that TMT power disparity has indirect positive effect on firm innovation intensity. Power disparity firstly promotes stronger task-oriented fault-line strength, which in turn promotes higher firm innovation intensity. Moreover, the mediating role of task-oriented fault-line strength is moderated by the imbalance of task-oriented subgroups, which is the relation between task-oriented fault-line strength and firm innovation intensity becomes stronger as the imbalance of task-oriented subgroups increases. Our findings provide great implications for TMT management and firm innovation management.