股权激励能抑制高管的急功近利倾向吗——基于企业创新的视角

Can Equity Incentives Restrain Executives from Chasing Short-term Interests?Based on the Perspective of Firm Innovation

本文使用2005-2015年沪深两市非金融保险类A股上市公司的纵向面板数据集,通过整合代理理论中的利益趋同效应假说与堑壕效应假说,对高管股权激励是否有助于企业创新进行了研究。研究结果表明,适当比例的股权激励是企业推动创新发展的有效机制。具体来说,根据利益趋同效应假说,作为解决代理问题的有效手段,股权激励能够促使高管在进行企业创新决策时考虑长远利益、加大研发投入;但堑壕效应假说认为,股权激励会增强高管抵御外部压力的能力,加剧了代理问题,致使高管在利用企业创新资源时有更大的动机追求个人利益,从而导致企业对研发资源的利用效率降低,不利于提升企业的创新转化率。此外,在高股票流动性的情况下,高管股权激励对研发投入的促进作用减弱,且高管股权激励对企业创新转化率的负向影响也将降低。总体而言,股权激励有助于降低高管的急功近利倾向,激励高管致力于企业长远创新发展。本文的研究结论有助于深入理解高管股权激励对企业创新的影响机制,以及对创新转化率的作用机理及其边界条件。

Based on Joseph A.Schumpeter’s original thought on the position of innovation which equals undisputed value creation and economic growth factor,innovation is at the center of all the phenomena,difficulties,and problems of economic life practically.Innovation is also an important factor that determines the essential competitiveness capability of firms.Using the longitudinal panel dataset of Chinese non-financial A-share listed firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2015,this study integrates the convergence of interest logic and the trenching logic of agency theory to assess whether executives’equity incentives benefit firms’innovation or not.Our findings indicate that an appropriate proportion of equity incentives is an effective mechanism for firm development derived from innovation.Specifically,the convergence of interest logic views executives’equity incentives as an effective means of solving agency problems,and executives’equity incentives can reduce agency costs and enable the relevant firms to increase R&D investments when making innovative decisions.Nevertheless,the trenching logic notes that executives’equity power will increase their ability to resist external pressure so that executives will have a greater motivation to pursue personal interests and aggravate agent problems when using innovation resources.Our results suggest that executives’equity incentives make the firm less efficient in using those resources to generate innovation output and do harm to the conversion rate of innovation.Results also show that,when stock liquidity is high,the promotion effect of executives’equity incentives on R&D investment is weakened and the inefficiency of executives’equity incentives in transforming R&D input into innovation output decreases.In general,equity incentives can restrain executives from chasing short-term interests and motivate executives to focus on long-term innovation development.We discuss the implications of these findings for research on the mechanism and the boundary condition of executives’equity incentives to firms’conversion rate of innovation.