Research On The Relationship Between The Corporate Governance Structure And R & D Investment

Technological innovation is the fountainhead of an enterprise’s core competitiveness. The increase of R&D investment will improve the enterprises’ ability of independent innovation. However, Chinese enterprises have not attached great importance on R&D, and both the impetus and investment to R&D are insufficient. In order to encourage and guide the enterprises’innovation, the government has taken a series of measures, for instance, financial subsidies, tax reduction, and government procurement, etc. These measures have improved the hardware facilities in the enterprises. However, the establishment and the improvement of the corporate governance structure, which is the key for enterprise innovation, have been ignored. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the relationship between the corporate governance structure and R&D investment.By analyzing the separation of ownership theory, principal-agent theory as well as stakeholder theory, this thesis takes the stakeholders as the main subject of corporate governance, and defines the system of stakeholders’coordination as the corporation governance structure. Based on literature review and theoretical analysis on the relationship between R&D investment and corporation governance structure and application of the stakeholder theory, this thesis divides the corporate governance into two aspects:the internal governance and external governance. The author selects some high-tech enterprises listed on the GEM as research samples, applies the multiple linear regression models to conduct an empirical test on the relationship between corporate governance structure and corporate R&D investment, and investigates how the R&D investment is influenced by the non-managerial variables of a company, such as size, internal cash flow, profitability, etc.This paper draws the conclusions that:government funding can benefit the corporate R&D investment. The concentration of equity is closely related to the intensity of corporate R&D investment. Their relation can be demonstrated in a quadratic curve, first decreased and then increased. A negative correlation shows between the size of the corporation and R&D investment intensity. Compared with large enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises pay more attention on innovation. Corporate profitability has positive effects on R&D investment; and enterprise with higher profit margin will have more investments on R&D.