政府研发支持行为影响高科技企业外部融资吗——基于组织合法性理论的解释

Does Government's R&D Support Have an Influence on External Financing of High-tech Firms? A Study Based on Organizational Legitimacy Theory

现如今,我国知识产权保护还相对薄弱,市场对高科技企业的认知和认可程度不足,使得企业组织合法性水平低下,外部融资困难。政府研发支持是政府对企业产品或能力的客观评价和肯定,具有一定的认证效应,能够帮助企业获取组织合法性,进而获得投资者的资金支持。本文基于组织合法性理论,重新审视政府研发支持对高科技企业外部融资的作用机理;采用非平衡面板数据,实证检验政府研发支持所具有的认证效应,及其对企业外部资金获取的影响;同时考察了知识产权保护水平对这一影响的调节作用。本文研究有助于丰富相关理论的内涵,拓宽理论研究边界,为提升企业融资能力提供有益参考,也为政府充分发挥在市场中的积极作用提供理论支持。

The weak protection of intellectual property rights(IPRs) in China which had been proved in recent research brought about low acknowledgment and recognition by investors on high-tech firms' value. This situation lowers the organizational legitimacy of high-tech firms by investors, and hence causing the firms' financing constraints. Considering the financing constraints of high-tech firms, the government grants some of the excellent ones R&D subsidies to their investment and development. From the perspective of organizational legitimacy theory, this kind of government's R&D support can be treated as the objective evaluation and confirmation for firms' products or technology awarded by the government. Thus, we believe that this kind of support has certification effect, which might have significant influence on acquisition of organization legitimacy, and then the external financing(both debt and equity) of high-tech firms. We firstly investigate the relationship between government's R&D support and external financing(both debt and equity) of high-tech firms, and then endeavor to find out the mechanism between the government R&D support and high-tech firms' external financing. We extend the extant literature on the certification effect by combining legitimacy theory with information asymmetry to build our theoretical framework to explain the mechanism. Moreover, we test our theoretical model under China's unique institutional setting, in particular, the weak protection of intellectual property rights(IPRs) in China. Using an unbalanced panel data of 549 listed and 192 unlisted Chinese high-tech firms from 2009 to 2013, we find a positive certification effect on the acquisition of bank loans for all high-tech firms. This positive effect if more profound in unlisted high-tech firms than the listed ones. We further find that regional variation of IPRs protection has a moderating effect on the effectiveness of the certification. The certification effect is more significant in those regions where IPRs protection is weaker. We hope that this research could enrich the research of relevant theory, help to improve enterprise's financing capability, and make some reference for the participation of China's government.