家族董事席位配置偏好影响企业投资效率吗

Does the Preference of Family Board Seats Allocation Influence Corporate Investment Efficiency

本文以2008-2017年我国A股上市家族企业为研究对象,从利他主义行为的视角探究了家族董事席位配置偏好与企业投资效率之间的关系。研究发现,家族董事席位超额配置程度越高,企业的投资效率越高,主要表现为抑制过度投资而非缓解投资不足,但家族董事席位配置不足程度提高,企业的投资效率不会降低。进一步分析发现,两权分离度较高或地区法制环境较差时,家族董事席位超额配置程度与企业投资效率之间的正相关性更强。机制探讨表明,家族董事席位超额配置程度越高,越有助于家族企业通过降低非家族董事投具"非赞成票"的倾向、减少控股家族的占款行为等途径来缓解代理冲突,从而提升了企业的投资效率。最后,控制潜在的内生性问题、考虑按持股比例分配董事名额所导致的非整数家族董事席位配置偏好与独立董事制度的影响、重新度量变量后,研究结论依然保持不变。本文不仅有助于深入理解家族企业投资效率的影响因素,也为家族企业完善董事会决策机制提供了一定的理论依据。

The academia has paid growing attention to the issue of board seats allocation in family firms,in which the distribution for seats on board sits at the heart.Meanwhile,the issue of seats distribution on board is indispensable topic in accounting and corporate finance literature and it significantly affects the efficiency of corporate capital allocation.Thus,in this paper,we attempt to investigate the allocation issue of board seats,which is of great value for academia and practice.Using samples of the Chinese A-share listed family firms from 2008 to 2017,we examine the relationship between the preference of family board seats allocation and corporate investment efficiency from the perspective of altruistic behavior.We find that firms with higher degree of over-allocation of family board seats invest more efficiently,evidenced by significantly suppressed over-investment instead of mitigated under-investment.However,we do not find evidence that the higher degree of under-allocation of family board seats from contribute to lower corporate investment efficiency.In addition,we find that the positive relationship between the degree of over-allocation of family board seats and corporate investment efficiency is more pronounced for firms with higher divergence of cash-f low and control rights,and weaker regional law system.Our mechanism discussion shows that the higher degree of over-allocation of family board seats contribute to mitigate agency cost for family firms by reducing tendency for non-family boards to vote"against board proposals"and appropriation behavior of controlling family,and eventually improving corporate investment efficiency.Furthermore,at the end of our paper,we conduct a series of robustness tests to maintain the validness of our results.Specifically,our findings still hold in the following cases:(1)addressing the potential endogenous issues;(2)considering the mutual effect of both the preference of non-integer family board seats allocation caused by the allocation of board seats based on the shareholding ratio and independent director system;(3)using alternative measures of our key variables.Overall,this paper not only helps us to understand the inf luencing factors of investment efficiency in family firms,but also provides theoretical implications for family firms to improve their board decision mechanism.