董事连锁网络与会计政策趋同——基于开发支出会计政策隐性选择的证据

Board Network and Accounting Policies＇ Convergence： Evidence Based on Implicit Decision of Development Cost in China

连锁董事作为董事兼任网络中重要的“节点”，是不同公司信息传递的媒介，会对公司会计政策选择造成影响，进而引起会计政策的趋同行为。中国新会计准则下的开发支出会计政策选择具有专业性，不属于公共信息，成为检验董事连锁网络信息传递的绝佳机会。本文同时结合董事连锁本身和个体董事居于董事网络的中心位置程度两个视角，通过考察上市公司在不同年份进行开发支出的隐性会计政策选择，研究连锁董事如何通过董事网络的信息传递机制影响公司的会计政策选择。结果发现，在当年执行过开发支出资本化的上市公司中，如果其聘任的独立董事在其他上市公司兼任内部董事或独立董事，那么目标公司将会有更大的概率也选择同样的会计政策；独立董事在其他选择开发支出资本化会计政策的公司兼任董事的频次越大，连锁董事对开发支出会计政策选择的传递效应越明显；独立董事在董事网络中的网络中心度越大，公司也越可能执行开发支出资本化会计政策。结论显示，由于信息传递渠道和学习效应的存在，不同公司的会计政策会因连锁董事的网络联结而逐渐趋同。

Being an important node of board network, interlocking directors is the infor mation bridge of different firms, and can have a convergence role to those corporate policies The policy choice of development cost in China is professional and doesn＇t belong to public in formation, which makes it the best opportunity to investigate board network＇s information transfer. Both considering board director＇s interlocking itself and director＇s position in network＇s centrality, we study how the firm＇s development cost choice policy is diffused through board network in different years. The empirical results show that, if one firm has se- lected the capitalization choice of development cost and this firm＇s directors sit in other firms board at the same time, then the target firm with the same interlock directors has more prob- ability to implement the same policy, this result is more obvious in independent directors sam- ple~ also, if the target firms＇ independent directors＇ network centrality is larger, then the firm has more probability to implement the development cost policy. The results suggest that be- cause of the existence of information transfer channel and learning effect, different firms＇ ac- counting policies could be convergent.