学者型独立董事、产品市场竞争与公司创新投入学者型独立董事、产品市场竞争与公司创新投入

Academic Independent Directors,Product Market Competition and Corporate Innovation

本文通过手工搜集A股上市公司聘用学者型独立董事的数据,研究了学者型独立董事与公司研究开发投入(R&D支出)的关系以及产品市场竞争在"学者型独立董事与R&D支出"关系中的调节效应。实证结果表明,学者型独立董事与R&D支出正相关;更进一步,学者型独立董事与产品市场竞争程度对R&D支出的正向作用之间是互相替代的。说明学者型独立董事促进了公司的研发投入,而产品市场竞争在一定程度上缓解了学者型独立董事和R&D支出之间的正向关系。此外,在采用不同的学者型独立董事和R&D支出的衡量方式,以及采用一阶差分模型控制潜在的内生性之后,本文的研究结果保持不变。

Institutional environment and corporate governance are two major determinations to affect corporate innovation.Currently,the influence of board structure as a dimension of corporate governance on innovation has received wide attention from the academic.It is an important problem about whether and how the size (proportion) of independent directors on the board of directors affects corporate innovation.In this regard,the findings are mixed at best in previous literature. In this study,we conjecture that the heterogeneity of independent directors should be responsible for inconsistent findings in the existing literature.From the perspective of board diversity and groupthink,this study explores the relation between academic independent directors and R&D (research and development expenditures),and further addresses the moderating effect of product market competition on above relation.Using hand-collected data on academic independent directors in Chinese listed firms during 2007-2013,our results reveal that academic independent directors are significantly positively associated with corporate R&D expenditures.Moreover,the positive association between academic independent directors and R&D is attenuated by the level of product market competition.The findings validate that academic independent directors improve corporate innovation,and there is a substitute effect between academic independent directors and product market competition in promoting R&D.Our results are robust to a variety of alternative measures of academic independent directors and R&D,respectively.After controlling the potential endogeneity,our conclusions still stand. This study contributes to prior literature as follows:(1) Few studies address the influence of academic independent directors on corporate innovation,and thus our study adds to prior literature in this regard;(2) Independent directors with different backgrounds may play different roles in corporate governance,and prior literature has focused on independent directors to examine whether and how educational background,major,work background,gender,overseas background and political relations affect corporate behavior.However,they provide little evidence on whether academic background of independent directors influences R&D.This study investigates the governance role of academic independent directors in affecting R&D,providing important supplement to extant studies.(3) This study also examines the moderating effect of product market competition on the relation between academic independent directors and corporate innovation,and finds that when the level of product market competition becomes weaker,the role of academic independent directors in promoting innovation is enhanced. The practical implications of this study are as follows:(1) According to our findings,academic independent directors play a significant role in promoting corporate innovation,which can motivate regulation bodies to adhere to the current independent director system,and further improve the relevant system according to its governance role.For enterprises,professors as independent directors is an effective way to promote their own innovation and maintain sustainable competitive advantages;and It is also an appropriate institutional arrangement to encourage companies to employ professors as independent directors,which will promote university-industry cooperation;(2) In regions or industries with low degree of Marketization,regulatory bodies should encourage companies to employ professors as independent directors;(3) Regulation bodies should encourage Chinese listed companies to employ professors with a high academic reputation from 985 universities or 211 universities as independent directors as far as possible.