市场声誉抑或风险规避——污点独立董事任职的影响机理

Reputation or Risk Aversion:The Influence Mechanism of Tainted Independent Directors'Appointment

市场声誉抑或风险规避?污点独立董事任职的作用机理一直受到学术界和监管机构的关注。本文根据已有文献,比较辨析了声誉机制和风险规避机制的具体作用路径与识别特征,构建了独立董事声誉机制的理论框架,并以2015—2018年深交所“通报批评”污点独立董事任职行为与企业特征作为研究对象,检验污点独立董事任职的影响机理。研究发现:(1)污点独立董事任职主要受到自身风险规避的影响。污点独立董事在受处罚后偏好任职财务风险较低、历史违规处罚次数较少的企业,并且会提前离任财务风险较高、历史违规处罚次数较多的企业。(2)声誉机制作用的效果不显著。污点独立董事依旧能够接到更好企业的独立董事席位邀约,留任风险较低的企业。本文的研究结果说明,现阶段中国资本市场污点独立董事处罚效果更多地体现了风险规避机制假说的影响机理,通过提高污点独立董事的履职风险意识来发挥作用,声誉机制的作用效果则被阻断。据此,我们从处罚信息披露门槛与跨期、候选人声明格式、独立董事外部联动机制三方面提出有针对性的改进建议。

Reputation or risk aversion?The mechanism of tainted independent directors appointment has always been concerned by academics and regulators.According to the existing literature,this paper analyzes influence path and identification characteristics of reputation mechanism and risk aversion,and constructs the theoretical framework of reputation mechanism of independent directors.Taking the employment behavior and enterprise characteristics of tainted independent directors in the“informed criticism”of Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2015 to 2018 as the research object,this paper examines the influence mechanism of tainted independent directors'appointment.It is found that:(1)The appointment of tainted independent directors is mainly affected by their own risk aversion.After punishment,they prefer to choose enterprises with lower financial risks and fewer penalties for historical viola tions,and they will leave the enterprises with higher financial risks and higher penalties for historical violations in advance.(2)The effect of reputation mechanism is not significant.Tainted independent directors can still receive the invitation from better enterprises and stay in the enterprises with lower risks.The conclusion of this paper shows that the punishment effect of tainted independent directors in China's capital market is more self-discipline.Based on this,we put forward three suggestions:improving the threshold and time limit of penalty information disclosure,revising the format of candidate statement,and constructing the external linkage mechanism of independent directors.