企业数字化转型与管理层激励

Enterprise Digital Transformation and Management Incentives

企业数字化转型完善了传统的公司治理结构和治理机制,拓宽了公司高质量发展的空间,充分发挥了资源赋能的作用。那么,企业数字化转型是否通过资源赋能作用增加管理层激励呢?本文从管理层股权和薪酬激励两个角度,实证检验了企业数字化转型对管理层激励的资源赋能作用。以2008—2020年中国A股主板上市公司为样本,本文发现,企业数字化转型显著增加了管理层股权和薪酬激励,这一效果主要是通过缓解公司面临的融资约束和提高公司的信息透明度来实现的。当管理层权力较大或者CEO具有高学历背景、公司外部治理机制较为薄弱、公司专业性股东话语权较小和公司所在省份制度环境较差时,上述结果更加显著。进一步研究发现,企业数字化转型通过增加管理层股权激励显著促进了公司创新投入,提高了公司的投资效率,即有效缓解了股东与管理层的代理冲突。此外,本文还排除了可能存在的内生性问题,并通过一系列稳健性检验确保结论的客观真实性。本文的结论表明,数字化转型作为新经济时代的重要战略变革形式,可以赋能公司管理层激励,进而缓解公司的代理冲突,具有重要的理论和实践意义。

Enterprise digital transformation has improved the traditional corporate governance structure and governance mechanism,broadened the space for high-quality development of the company,and fully played the role of resource empowerment.So,does enterprise digital transformation increase management incentives via resource empowerment?On the one hand,enterprise digital transformation may have an enabling effect on management incentives via financing mechanisms and information mechanisms.Enterprise digital transformation can help alleviate financing constraints faced by companies.Therefore,the interests of companies'shareholders are better protected,the investment tendency of shareholders is significantly enhanced,and the company's willingness to grant incentives to management is significantly improved.In addition,enterprise digital transformation is conducive to improving companies'information transparency and improving companies'external information environment.Higher information transparency will improve the accuracy of shareholders evaluations of management and other core employees,thereby enhancing the motivation and effectiveness of shareholders'incentives for management.However,enterprise digital transformation can also crowd out management incentives.Enterprise digital transformation has increased the proportion of highly educated workers,optimized the company's labor structure,and made employees more proactive and diligent in their work.According to championship theory,the improvement in employee compensation and work effort brought about by enterprise digital transformation reduces the willingness of companies to provide high management incentives.In addition,enterprise digital transformation can also improve the professional structure of shareholders by attracting a large number of institutional investors to hold shares of the company,more quickly and accurately identify the tunneling tendency of major shareholders,and form a monitoring and balancing mechanism within shareholders.At this point,institutional investor ownership becomes an alternative governance tool for management incentives.It can be seen that whether enterprise digital transformation will empower management incentives remains to be empirically tested.Based on China's A-share mainboard listed companies from 2008 to 2020,this paper examines the effect of enterprise digital transformation on management incentives.The study finds that enterprise digital transformation has significantly increased management equity and salary incentives,which is mainly achieved by easing the financial constraints faced by companies and improving the information transparency of companies.The above results are more significant when the CEO has more power or higher education background,the external governance mechanism of the company is weaker,the voice of the company's professional shareholders is smaller and the institutional environment of the province where the company is located is poorer.Further research finds that enterprise digital transformation has significantly promoted the company's innovation and investment efficiency by increasing the equity incentives of the managers,which effectively alleviates the agency conflict between shareholders and management.In addition,this paper also excludes possible endogeneity problems,and ensures the objectivity and authenticity of the conclusions of this paper through a series of robustness tests.Moreover,this paper has following contributions.First,from the perspective of digital transformation,this article reveals the underlying logic of digital technology empowering management incentives in the new economic era,and complements the literature on factors affecting management incentives.Secondly,this paper studies the effect of enterprise digital transformation on internal governance mechanisms from the perspective of management incentives,enriching the literature on the economic consequences of enterprise digital transformation.Thirdly,the conclusions of this paper have strong theoretical significance and practical implications.As an important micro entity of the real economy,whether enterprises will obtain high profits through the use of digital technology is also an important research issue.Studying the specific mechanisms and economic consequences of how enterprise digital transformation influencing management incentives is conducive to deepening the understanding of technological change,and provides practical inspiration for the formulation of corporate transformation and upgrading strategies in the digital economy era.