TMT Characteristics Of Knowledge Framework Relate To Firm R&D Investment And Growth

With the advent of the information age and the growing challenges of economic globalization, in order to survive in the increasingly competitive world and consider their long-term development, enterprises (especially small and medium-sized enterprises) not only need to plunge into innovation to launch a series of independent research and development (R&D) activities, but also should concern about the business performance to ensure their own ability of growth. Unlike in the past, it is not enough that current management and operation of an enterprise only rely on an operator' knowledge and skills, in more cases, a company often need the collective wisdom of its entire top management team (TMT). So the knowledge reserve and cognitive style of a top management team not only determine strategic choices and innovative projects of the company in a great extent, but also have a significant impact on the business performance and ability of growth of the company. Therefore, the author thinks that it is important to use companies from the board for small and medium-sized enterprises in China to research the relationship between knowledge framework characteristics of top management team and firm R&D investment and the relationship between knowledge framework characteristics of top management team and firm growth. This study not only widens the application field and range of upper echelons theory, but also expands contents of research on top management team. In addition, according to the enterprise's own demand of R&D and growth, the study can provide some reference for corporate executive allocation of human resources.In this paper, the author adopts these methods that combine theoretical research with empirical research and involve qualitative and quantitative analysis. First of all, by doing a lot of qualitative and theoretical research on the basis of previous literature the author propounds several hypotheses and models about this study. Then, the author selects 2004-2007 annual reports of the listed companies from the board for small and medium-sized enterprises in China as the research objects, also uses SPSS software to analyze large amounts of data and test several hypotheses and models of this study. Generally speaking, the results of this study tend to support the significant linear relationship between knowledge framework characteristics of top management team and firm R&D investment and the significant linear relationship between knowledge framework characteristics of top management team and firm growth. At the same time, in a certain range the results of this study can forecast not only strategic decisions and innovative processes of enterprises but also business performance and growth potential of firms. Findings indicate:(1) The educational lever of TMT has significantly positive influence on firm R&D investment and growth.(2) The educational specialty of science and engineering of TMT has significantly positive influence on firm R&D investment, but has significantly negative influence on firm growth.(3) Both the heterogeneity of educational lever of TMT and the heterogeneity of educational specialty of TMT have significantly negative influence on firm R&D investment and growth.