中小股东参与治理会提升薪酬契约有效性吗--来自高管薪酬粘性的证据

Does the Participation of Minority Shareholders Improve the Effectiveness of the Compensation Contract?Evi-dence from the Stickiness of Executive Compensation

薪酬粘性是衡量公司薪酬契约有效性的重要指标。本文采用2014-2018年上市公司中小股东股东大会投票数据,基于薪酬粘性模型讨论了中小股东参与公司治理对薪酬契约有效性的影响。研究发现,中小股东积极参与公司治理能够通过缓解信息不对称发挥监督治理作用,进而显著抑制高管薪酬粘性,提升高管薪酬契约有效性;同时,这一效应在公司大股东监督治理更强、市场预期更稳健时愈发明显。进一步研究发现,中小股东的治理效应还受到了主体异质性的显著影响。本文的研究结论拓展了对中小股东参与公司治理作用的认识,也为相关政策制定提供了经验性证据。

Minority shareholder is a special kind of subjects in corporate governance,and it is embedded in two groups of principal-agent relationships.They not only entrust the management of the company to the management team,but also entrust some control rights and decision-making rights to the major shareholders or controlling shareholders.Due to the above two kinds of principal-agent,the information asymmetry and high voting transaction cost,the role of minority shareholders is largely limited.At the same time,early research believe that minority shareholders are not enthusiastic about participating in corporate governance.Some research on the supervision and governance of minority shareholders mainly focus on their role in alleviating the type-II agency problems.It is worth noting that with the popularization of information technology and the improvement of the awareness of small and medium-sized shareholders to participate in governance,the enthusiasm of minority shareholders to participate in governance has gradually increased.With stronger independence and richer social network,it has become more and more important in alleviating the type-I agency problems,and its role in supervising and governing managers’behavior has also become increasingly prominent.Therefore,it is of urgent and important practical and theoretical significance to discuss the role of minority shareholders’governance at the moment when emerging information technology has become popular.Executive compensation contract is the core of the game between shareholders and managers,and its effectiveness is also an import-ant topic in the study of the type-I agency problem.Executive compensation contract is a compensation plan and incentive way to alleviate the interest contradiction between shareholders and managers.It can encourage managers to act with the goal of maximizing shareholders’interests.However,due to the asymmetric information,it is difficult for shareholders to objectively judge the perfor-mance of managers,resulting in the reduction of the effectiveness of executive compensation contracts and the mismatch between executive compensation and performance.The stickiness of executive compensation is one of the common situations,which is mani-fested in the asymmetric state of executive compensation changing with performance.It means that executive compensation increases rapidly when performance rises,but does not decrease synchronously with performance when performance declines,or even rises against the trend.In order to alleviate the mismatch between executive compensation and performance and improve the effectiveness of executive compensation contract,it is necessary to introduce more supervisory forces to alleviate the information asymmetry be-tween shareholders and managers.Minority shareholders with rich social networks could more actively participate in governance.Will they pay attention to executive compensation and provide more useful information for the supervision and governance of execu-tive compensation,so as to enhance the effectiveness of the compensation contract?Based on the data of Chinese listed companies from 2014 to 2018,this paper uses the attending information of minority shareholders in the general meeting of shareholders to analysis the impact of minority shareholders’participation on executive compensation con-tracts effectiveness.It is found that the active participation of minority shareholders in corporate governance can play a supervisory role by alleviating information asymmetry,thus significantly inhibiting the stickiness of executive compensation and improving the effectiveness of executive compensation contracts.The effect is strengthened when the company’s major shareholders have stronger supervision,and the market expectation is more stable.Further research shows that the governance effect of minority shareholders is also significantly affected by the heterogeneity of subjects.The conclusion of this paper expands the understanding of the role of minority shareholders in corporate governance,and also provides empirical evidence for the formulation of relevant policies.This re-search can arouse the attention of minority shareholders.Minority shareholders are not just“rubber stamps”in corporate governance,but can also actively make suggestions for the company’s operation and management by taking advantage of their own advantages and effectively improve the corporate governance level.