基于捐赠的“校企联系”促进了公司创新吗?

Does University-Business Relation on the Basis of Philanthropic Giving Promote Corporate Innovation?

本文首次发掘了基于捐赠的“校企联系”,使用手工收集的2011~2019年期间上市公司向国内高校捐赠的数据,并基于社会交换理论,实证研究了基于捐赠的“校企联系”对公司创新的影响。研究发现:(1)基于捐赠的“校企联系”与公司创新(创新投入与创新产出)显著正相关,揭示了高校的知识溢出对公司创新的作用。(2)基于捐赠的“校企联系”显著增加了发明专利的比例、降低了非发明专利(实用型专利与外观型专利)的比例,说明基于捐赠的“校企联系”对公司创新产出的影响在不同专利类型之间存在不对称性,从而在一定程度上抑制了公司创新产出层面的“内卷化”现象。(3)相对于董事长具有学术背景的企业而言,基于捐赠的“校企联系”对公司创新的促进作用在董事长非学术背景的企业中更强。(4)与第一大股东持股比例较高的企业相比,基于捐赠的“校企联系”对公司创新的促进作用在第一大股东持股比例较低的企业中更为突出。本文还发现基于捐赠的“校企联系”与公司创新之间的正相关关系在产品市场竞争程度较高的企业中更为突出,且高学历员工比例是基于捐赠的“校企联系”促进公司创新的中介变量。

Using hand-collected data on corporate philanthropic giving to domestic universities during the period of 2011-2019,this study firstly explores the“university-business relation”(UBR),and then empirically examines the impact of UBR on corporate innovation from the perspective of the social exchange theory.Our findings reveal several aspects as below:(1)UBR is significantly positively related with corporate innovation(innovative input and output),suggesting the spill-over effect of college knowledge on corporate innovation;(2)UBR leads to significantly higher(lower)proportion of invention patents(non-invention patents;utility and design patents),implying that UBR exerts asymmetric impacts on corporate innovative output,and thus UBR inhibits the“involution”phenomenon to some extent;(3)the positive relation between UBR and corporate innovation is more pronounced for firms without academic chairman,compared with their counterparts;(4)the positive relation between UBR and corporate innovation is more pronounced for firms with lower blockholder ownership,compared with those with higher blockholder ownership.Moreover,our findings still stand after controlling for the endogeneity issue.Finally,our study further finds that the positive relation between UBR and corporate innovation is more pronounced for firms with higher product market competition,and the proportion of educated staff with higher degrees can serves as the mediating effect on the relation between UBR and firm innovation.