高管内部校友关系与高管主动离职行动

Executives'internal alumni ties and executives'voluntary turnover

校友关系继承了校友印记与社会关系这两类概念的重要属性,有别于其他类型的社会关系。已有研究主要关注高管外部校友关系对企业层面结果带来的作用,强调了校友关系所带有的更深层次信任与认同下的资源与信息交换属性,但是缺乏对高管内部校友关系在社会互动过程中扮演的重要角色之理解。基于此,本文通过探索高管内部校友关系如何对高管的主动离职行动产生影响,对上述问题进行回答。引入社会嵌入的视角,本文提出,高管内部校友关系能够使高管更深地嵌入进公司中,进而表现出更少的主动离职现象,且不同校友关系类型所能引发的效应量存在一定差异。本文以我国沪深两市A股上市公司中的高层管理者为研究对象,基于竞争性风险生存回归模型展开经验分析,支持了以上观点。本文丰富了对中国情境下的校友关系概念及其性质的探讨,加深了高管内部社会关系在维护团队稳定方面之重要作用的理解。同时,本文对高管主动离职前因的探究也有所贡献。

In China,the“alumni”represents a precious and pure interpersonal connection.This connection,established on the basis of a shared educational background,combines the important characteristics of alumni identity and social ties.As a type of social ties that has both emotional and instrumental features,alumni ties differ from other types of social ties and are thus worthy of being studied as a separate research topic.Existing research primarily focuses on the impact of executives′external alumni ties on firm-level outcomes,emphasizing the resource and information exchange features based on deep trust and identification.However,there is a lack of understanding of the crucial role played by executives′internal alumni ties in social interaction processes.To address this issue,this study explores how executives′internal alumni ties affect their voluntary turnover.Drawing on social embeddedness theory,this study theoretically posits that executives′internal alumni ties are important social factors in reducing the occurrence of their voluntary turnover.The presence of executives′internal alumni ties,that is,the presence of alumni ties between an executive and another member of the upper echelon,increases the degree of embeddedness of executives in the upper echelon.This embeddedness is manifested in three effects:1)it increases the normative pressure for executives to stay within the company(link effect);2)it reduces differences and friction in social interaction processes(fit effect);and 3)it raises the psychological and actual costs of executives′turnover(sacrifice effect),ultimately reducing the likelihood of executives′voluntary turnover.Moreover,this study further divides executives′internal alumni ties into different types,and proposes additional effects.Theoretically,we expect that:close alumni ties,referring to a higher internal alumni network density,will trigger a greater degree of the link effect;concurrent alumni ties,meaning that the two individuals with alumni ties attended the same school at overlapping times,will trigger a greater degree of the fit effect;and upward alumni ties,in which an individual has ties via the internal alumni network to individuals who are higher in power,status,wealth,and prestige,will trigger a greater degree of the sacrifice effect.This paper uses data from 2751 executives in the A-share market of China′s Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2004 to 2016 and employs a competing-risks survival regression model(with voluntary turnover as a failure event and involuntary turnover as a competing event)to empirically analyze the relationship between internal alumni ties among executives in Chinese listed companies and their voluntary turnover.Our findings are as follows:1)Internal alumni ties are widespread in Chinese listed companies,with nearly half of the executives having alumni ties with other executives or board members.Among these,over 10%of executives have alumni ties with the CEO,and more than one-third have ties with other non-CEO executives or board members.These proportions have remained relatively stable in recent years.2)When executives in listed companies have any internal alumni ties,their turnover risk is significantly lower than that of executives without alumni ties,with an estimation that the risk can be reduced by 22%.3)Different types of alumni ties have varying effects on executives′voluntary turnover.Specifically,close alumni ties,concurrent alumni ties,and upward alumni ties can all reduce a greater degree of the voluntary turnover risk;undergraduate and general graduate alumni ties have a more significant effect in reducing executives′voluntary turnover,while MBA/EMBA alumni ties do not;prestigious alumni ties have a more pronounced effect in reducing executives′voluntary turnover compared to non-prestigious alumni ties.4)After controlling for endogeneity issues and conducting robustness tests,the main conclusions of this paper are still valid.The main implications of this research are as follows:First,this paper for the first time empirically explores the status of internal alumni network in Chinese listed companies,revealing the universality and importance of alumni ties among executives in Chinese listed companies,and confirming the significant negative effect of alumni ties on executives′turnover.Second,this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of alumni ties and summarizes its key features.On the one hand,alumni ties can help eliminate information asymmetry and enhance team cohesion,but may also exacerbate the occurrence of violations due to their private nature,exhibiting a distinct“double-edged sword”effect.Additionally,building on previous research that primarily focused on executives′external social ties,this study emphasizes the nature of internal social ties,and responds to calls for research on the relationship between social capital and work embeddedness in social embeddedness theory.Furthermore,this paper deepens the understanding of executive attrition issues,highlighting the importance of social factors in executive turnover research,addressing the existing research gap in explaining the phenomenon of executives′voluntary turnover,and providing new insights into the causes of executives′voluntary turnover.