Corporate Governance And Enterprise Technological Innovation:Inherent Mechanism And Empirical Study

Entering the21st century---an era of knowledge economy, technological innovation has become more important for both the enterprises and regional development. In the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, the Chinese government clearly points out the major role of the enterprises in state technological innovation, and actively promotes the Chinese enterprises to transfer themselves from "Made in China" to "Created in China", so that China can gradually get rid of the dependence on the foreign technology, change the mode of economy growth and achieve a long-term development. In this situation, how do the Chinese enterprises play their role in the national technological innovation well? There is a common phenomenon that the enterprises face the same external environment, but exhibit different innovation performance. It is necessary to look for answers from within the enterprises. Thus, from the view of enterprise internal system environment, this study is aimed to analyze the relationship between corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation. Unfortunately, there is a small number of literatures on researching the relationship between corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation now, and some key issues, namely the relation path, inherent mechanism and effect mode, are still in exploration and need more systematic and in-depth study.According to the questions mentioned above, this dissertation has carried out the following research and made some findings:1. It is analyzed whether there is a certain relationship between corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation. This dissertation makes analysis from the views of key factors forming or influencing technological innovation, from conditions of technological innovation and from characteristics of technological innovation. It is found that corporate governance plays an important role in technological innovation activities, as far as institutional system guarantee, power delivery and resource supply are concerned. Then through tracing back to the theories with regard to the relationship between corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation, the theoretical foundation is laid for the further study.2. It is intended to build a model of the relationship between corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation by using Grounded Theory with data from practice. In-depth interviews with the veterans in business and academy are made, and then according to the procedures and analytical methods of Grounded Theory, three relationship paths are formed, namely the relationship between institutional system of corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation, the relationship between power system of corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation, the relationship between resource system of corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation. The model provides premise and solid foundation for the further research on the inherent mechanism.3. An analysis is made of the inherent mechanism of three systems of corporate governance in detail. Based on the established model, it is analyzed how the three systems of corporate governance respectively effect enterprise technological innovation, and accordingly some key factors are selected. The institutional system mainly involves the factors of property right system, operation of shareholder, board of directors and supervisor organs, the system of board; the power system mainly involves structure and nature of equity stake, long-term and short-term incentive mechanism of top management; and the resource system refers to the resource input of corporate governance subjects. The extracted factors make the impact path from corporate governance to enterprise technological innovation more clear, and quantitative analysis can be performed through them.4. An empirical research is made on the influence of the key factors of three corporate governance systems on enterprise technological innovation. Statistic analysis with the latest data of Chinese listed companies in competitive industry and case study with APES research method are used in the empirical research. The conclusions show, regarding the institutional system, in addition to clear property rights, regulatory and effective operation of governance institutional organs, moderate size and independence of board are in favor of enterprise technological innovation; regarding the power system, the ownership balancing and long-term incentive such as stock ownership are conducive to enterprise technological innovation; regarding the resource system, the subjects of corporate governance in different governance organs supply enterprise technological innovation with necessary or important resources and meanwhile form a network acting on the technological innovation. In general, shareholders provide financial resource, while in the process of innovation decision and implementation, board, general manager and R&D department are the most important participants, and the general manager and R&D department are the two core organs in the network of enterprise technological innovation activities.5. Some recommendations for the enterprises in practice have been proposed. People can promote technological innovation effectively through the three systems of corporate governance. The three systems of corporate governance are not separated, but are closely related. On the basis of healthy institutional system, a strong power system can be produced for enterprise technological innovation through measures of corporate governance, and the power system can push the corporate governance subjects to devote their resources into innovation activities. According to the theoretical analysis and empirical research, this dissertation also gives some advice for the Chinese enterprises on how to improve technological innovation by completing the institutional system of corporate governance, by strengthening power systems of corporate governance and by optimizing resource system of corporate governance.The new ideas contributed to theory and practice are listed below:1. Through building the three-level relationship model, namely the institutional system, power system and resource system of corporate governance related with enterprise technological innovation, the mechanism of corporate governance influencing enterprise technological innovation is analyzed both theoretically and empirically, which solves the problem in previous literatures on how to comprehensively and systematically demonstrate the relationship between corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation. And in this study, the analysis is carried out from the perspective of enterprise technological innovation, concretely from its factors, its conditions, its characteristics, in combination with system factors of corporate governance to find the inner relationship between corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation, which makes some contributions to further research on the interaction between corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation.2. Grounded Theory is applied in this study to build the three-level relationship model, which makes the model have theoretical foundation from qualitative analysis for the first time. In the empirical research part, APES method is applied in the case study to show how the resources of corporate governance subjects in different organs play their roles in the process of enterprise technological innovation.3. A research is made on the influence of resource system of corporate governance on enterprise technological innovation. It is proposed that there exists a relationship between the resource system of corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation. By using Chinese typical innovative enterprise as a case, the empirical study exhibits how the resources of governance subjects in different corporate organs act on innovation. This extends and complements the research content in this field. Above all, the relationship between corporate governance and enterprise technological innovation lacks more comprehensive and in-depth study now. This dissertation has tried to establish the relationship model between them based on the literatures, theories and data in practice, analyze the inherent mechanism and carry out empirical research, so as to provide new views to this area. And it is hoped that this dissertation will help managers and policy makers improve the enterprise institutional system and promote enterprise technological innovation in the process of deepening reform and development in our country.