Governance Evaluation Of Software Enterprises And Its Empirical Research

The typical character of software enterprises is to highlight R&D human capital value. The proportion of the R&D human capital investment to the operation cost is great. Continuous, efficient, swift R&D ability is critical for software enterprises'survival. The maximum of enterprise's value mainly depends on the maximum of the R&D human capital value. Therefore, R&D human capital is the base for analyzing governance structure and mechanism of software enterprises. The authorization and realization of R&D human capital property rights would cause a great challenge for traditional corporate governance theory. The increase of R&D human capital value will cause the mainstream corporate governance theory develops into new enterprise governance theory. Real capital owner isn't authorized principal qualification naturally. Human capital owner also has the principal qualification. The above typical character of software enterprises determines the difference between its contract and traditional enterprises'contract. Traditional corporate governance structure and mechanism can't deal with these uncertainties, which result in the instability of software enterprise development. In order to maintain and promote the software enterprises'development, related governance structure and mechanism must be reshaped in software enterprise. This is the reason that governance evaluation of software enterprises is put forward.The governance of software enterprises is defined as optimizing"the allocation of control rights and organization rents"in the R&D activities and harmonizing power and responsibility of the stakeholders (mainly including R&D human capital owners) through formal or informal institution. This will make the value maximum for R&D human capital and enterprises. Thus, the rights and interests of all stakeholders can be guaranteed. The final aim of the governance of software enterprise is optimizing"the allocation of organization rents", which is realized by"optimizing the allocation of control rights". Therefore, control rights are the base and tools of the governance of software enterprises. The allocation of control rights is restricted by the boundary of the governance of software enterprises.The boundary of the governance of software enterprises is the range of the allocation of control rights and organization rents in R&D activities. It is specially also the restriction and criterion of the governance tools and ways. The five dimesions including power balance among top managers, intellectual property allocation, R&D performance evaluation, R&D employees'incentive, information disclosing would influence the range of the governance activities directly. The institution assignment of the five dimensions would determine power source, application and restriction of R&D governace subjects. The inside procedure of decision-making and the extent of participating decision for different subjects are also defined. This constitutes the stucture and evaluation objects of the governance of software enterprises.The market environment Chinese software enterprises face is very different from that of British & American. In China, outside governance environment and market mechanisms aren't perfect. Information isn't sufficient and the extent of disclosing information is very low. The market of enterprise control rights couldn't restrict the governance effectively. Therefore, this article mainly designed indicator system of the governance from the perspective"whether institution is perfect and procedure is standard". For the governance mechanisms that are institutionalized and standard, this article mainly designed indicator system from the perspective"whether insitution operation is effective". Finally, 17 secondary indicators and 112 tertiary indicators of the governance evaluation system were designed.Four ministries of Chinese government including National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Information Industry and State Administration of Taxation jointly identified some key software enterprises in national plan in the period of 2002-2004, which key software enterprises were selected as empirical sample to investige their governance level. Through a series of correlative and regressive empirical analysis, the results show that the governance performance has rather significant explanation to the performance of software enterprise. the software enterprise performance is excellent accordingly when its government performance is outstanding.