独立董事连锁对内部控制的影响机理:基于声誉效应与学习效应的实证研究

The influence mechanism of independent director interlocks on internal control quality:An empirical study based on reputation and learning effects

本文首次从独立董事连锁的声誉效应和学习效应视角,运用匹配(1:1 Pairing)+双重差分(DID)法研究独立董事连锁对企业内部控制质量的影响机理。研究发现:在声誉效应视角,独立董事连锁能显著提高企业的内部控制质量,且兼任公司家数较多的连锁独立董事对内部控制质量的提高作用更明显;在学习效应视角,独立董事连锁能显著提高其董事会出席率,且该种效应主要出现在高学历的连锁独立董事身上。此外,本研究首次发现了独立董事连锁对企业内部控制质量的传导机制,即通过提高连锁独立董事的董事会出席率进而提升了企业的内部控制质量。本文的结果表明,我国监管部门和上市公司应当重视独立董事连锁的作用,这对公司治理与内部控制相关政策的制定具有重要的启发意义。

The inherent requirements of corporate high-quality development are closely related to the five objectives of internal control.To be specific,internal control requires reasonable assurance regarding compliance with applicable laws and regulations,asset safety,improvement of operational effectiveness and efficiency,reliability and integrity of financial reporting,and promotion of corporate development strategy,which are considered as the micro-basis for ensuring the sustainable and steady development of enterprises.Therefore,how to scientifically and rationally perfect internal control and improve its quality has become an important issue to be addressed urgently by supervisory authorities,practitioners,and academics.Independent directors are an important part of corporate governance mechanisms,and their role in corporate internal control quality has been widely studied.However,existing research mainly focuses on the proportion and background characteristics of independent directors,overlooking the impact of independent director interlocks on the quality of internal control.So,do independent director interlocks as the reflection of their responsibility and cognitive basis play a role in the construction and implementation of internal control through incentive-constraint and information transmission functions?If the answer is positive,what is the mechanism?To address this problem,this study innovatively investigates the relationship between independent director interlocks and internal control quality and the influencing mechanism thereof from the perspective of reputation effect and learning effect with Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2015 as samples.To better handle the endogenous problem,1:1 pairing and difference in difference(DID)methods are adopted for regression,and the quality of internal control is measured using the natural logarithm of“internal control index of Chinese listed companies”.The findings show that,from the perspective of reputation effect,independent director interlocks can significantly improve the quality of internal control,and the more the companies where interlocked independent directors concurrently work,the more evident the improvement effect;from the perspective of learning effect,independent director interlocks can significantly improve the attendance rate of interlocked independent directors,and this effect is mainly found in the interlocks of highly educated directors.Therefore,independent director interlocks promise to improve internal control quality by increasing the attendance rate of interlocked independent directors.This study makes some contributions in the following aspects.Firstly,it incorporates independent director network,reputation effect,learning effect,and internal control quality into a framework for research for the first time and finds that independent director interlocks play an important role in internal control quality,which enriches the literature on the influencing factors of internal control at the level of corporate governance mechanism.Secondly,from the perspectives of reputation effect and learning effect,this study substitutes the responsibility and cognitive basis of independent directors,affirms the positive role of independent director interlocks,and directly answers the“mystery of the role of independent directors”.Thirdly,on the basis of clarifying that independent director interlocks can improve the quality of internal control,this study further identifies the transmission mechanism between them,that is,independent director interlocks improve the quality of internal control by increasing the attendance rate of interlocked independent directors.In addition to the above academic contributions,this study is of certain regulatory and policy significance.Firstly,for firms,it is necessary to underscore the role of independent director interlocks in improving internal control quality and strengthen the requirements for the attendance directors to promote the learning effect of independent director interlocks.Secondly,for regulators,attention should be paid to continuously enhance the supervision and guidance over the implementation of the corporate independent director system to promote the high-quality economic growth of China,with the goal of effectively perfecting the regulatory requirements for corporate governance at the level of independent director interlocks.