| With the increasing competition of market and rapid changes of the market environment, a single decision-maker due to his limitation in perspective, knowledge and skill, has been unable to meet enterprise’s demand to make accurate decisions quickly. Companies can make accurate and efficient strategic decision only by top management team. Because executives from various departments have different knowledge and skills, they can consider things at different points of view, so that we can make different kinds of knowledge together and thus make more comprehensive and accurate strategic decisions to maximize enterprises’ value. Clearly, the formulation of enterprises’ strategic decisions cannot be separated from the top management team. Simultaneously, the qualities of the top management team will also affect the choice of strategy.Due to some qualities of the executive are abstract and difficult to measure, the Upper-echelons Theory draw some research of team demographic characteristics to make demographic characteristics substitute these qualities, and believe that these demographic characteristics will affect enterprises’strategy and performance. As the important resource of enterprises’technology innovation performance, R&D activities have been an important source for the enterprise to obtain and maintain long-term competitive advantage, especially for high-tech enterprises. The importance of R&D activities become increasingly apparent and R&D investment has been a major strategic decision for high-tech enterprises.Whether the top management team demographic characteristics affect R&D investment in the special institution and cultural background of China, and whether the different nature of property rights of enterprises will affect the relationship between the two? These are issues this paper is going to study and explore.The research background of existing top management team is mostly concentrated in the mature economic market, and the study of enterprises from transition country and emerging market is very seldom. Also the study is always focus on the relationship between top management team characteristics and enterprises’ performance, and the study about strategic choice and R&D investment is relatively seldom. The existing study also hasn’t considered the property rights of enterprises. Therefore, this paper research the relationship between top management team demographic characteristics and R&D investment based on the perspective of property right has theoretical value. Simultaneously, with this research, it can provide the basis for the executive configuration policy makers to reasonable allocate top management team members and thus facilitate the long-term development of the enterprise. So the study of the impact of top management team demographic characteristics on R&D investment also has some practical significance.On the basis of existing research, firstly, this paper briefly introduce related theories and theoretical analyze the study based on these theories and propose the theoretical research model. Then this paper uses Chinese listed high-tech enterprises as research samples, and divided them into state-holding listed companies and non-state-holding listed companies for empirical test. There are two purposes of this study:(1) to test different effects of top management team demographic characteristics of enterprises with different property rights on R&D investment, and provide the basis of executives’configuration for them.(2) To compare the explanatory power of top management team demographic characteristics to R&D investment with CEO personal characteristics and prove that the choice of strategy is a reflection of top management team characteristics, it is the result of collective decision-making rather than a single decision-making.In the theoretical analysis section, this paper makes a theoretical analysis of the relationship between top management team demographic characteristics and R&D investment based on the Upper-echelons Theory. It suggests that the strategic choice is determined by top management team, and the different values, modes of cognition and insights of top management team members will affect the competitive behavior of enterprises. Therefore, the age, term, education level and professional background of top management team members will affect R&D investment through affecting their behavioral preferences. For the relationship between the heterogeneity of top management team demographic characteristics and R&D investment, this paper makes a analysis on the basis of Upper-echelons Theory, coupled with the Social Class Theory and Information Decision Theory. First, this paper divides the heterogeneity of top management team demographic characteristics into the relation-oriented ones and task-oriented ones. The age heterogeneity belongs to the relation-oriented one, and the term heterogeneity, education level heterogeneity and professional background heterogeneity are task-oriented ones. The age heterogeneity mainly affects the formation of the internal interpersonal relationship, so according to the Social Class Theory, it will intensify the internal conflicts and be not conducive to make innovative strategic decisions for enterprises. However, the term heterogeneity, education level heterogeneity and professional background heterogeneity will directly affect the work of the entire team, so according to the Information Decision Theory, they will bring more ideas and information for the team and will have positive impacts on the team work. So these heterogeneities are conducive to the innovative strategic decision making for enterprises.In the empirical test section, the author obtain data of Chinese listed high-tech enterprises from CSMAR database combined with manual collection, the data of R&D investment from year2007to2011are from the listed enterprises’annual report notes. And the data of top management team are from Reuters by manual collection. For the selection of variable, this paper selects age, term, education level and professional background as the top management team demographic characteristics. And this paper will study from the homogeneity and heterogeneity of these four characteristics to reveal the relationship between the average age, average term, average education level, the proportion of technical professional background and the age heterogeneity, term heterogeneity, education level heterogeneity, professional background heterogeneity of top management team and R&D investment. This paper will divide the samples into state-holding listed companies and non-state-holding listed companies depending on the nature of the actual control of the listed high-tech enterprises in China, and research the effect of top management team on R&D investment respectively. Finally, it will conclude that:(1) for non-state-holding listed companies, the average age of top management team is negatively related to the R&D investment, but the age heterogeneity isn’t significantly related to it. The average term of top management team is positively related to the R&D investment, but the term heterogeneity isn’t significantly related to it. The average education level of top management team is positively related to the R&D investment, and the education heterogeneity is also positively related to it. The proportion of technical professional background members is positively related to the R&D investment, and the professional background heterogeneity is also positively related to it.(2) For state-holding listed companies, there is only the proportion of technical professional background members is positively related to the R&D investment, and other demographic characteristics of top management team aren’t significantly related to it.(3)Compared with non-state-holding listed companies, the demographic characteristics of top management team in state-holding listed companies have more influence on R&D investment.(4) The explanation power of top management team demographic characteristics to R&D investment is stronger than CEO personal characteristics.Based on the above conclusions, we can see that in non-state-holding listed companies, the top management team demographic characteristics have greater impact on R&D investment, and the heterogeneity of education and professional background of members also will promote R&D investment. Therefore, for the team-building of non-state-holding listed companies, it should establish a relatively younger team to effectively use the innovation of young executives. And from the aspect of top management team’s term, it would be better promote and appoint top managers internally to extent the term of them. From the aspect of top management team’s education level, it can be used to promote the team’s education level by internal study and service education. At the same time, as the education level heterogeneity can promote the R&D investment level, it should make the education level dispersion as far as possible in the case of a high average education level to achieve a reasonable construction of education level of the top management team. From the aspect of managers’professional background, it should focus on the appointment of members who has technical background. At the same time, it also should focus on the configuration of members with different background to make the knowledge and skills of team diversified. For state-holding listed companies, the top management team demographic characteristics have little effect on R&D investment, and there may be other factors that will affect the strategic decisions of enterprises. Also, the heterogeneity of team hasn’t played a significant role in state-holding listed companies, which may be related to the condition of our country. It indicates that the state-holding listed companies in our country are more needed a stable and tacit understanding team to lead the development of the enterprise. Finally, the conclusion that the explanation power of top management team demographic characteristics to R&D investment is stronger than CEO personal characteristics also proves the Upper-echelons Theory.The followings are the main contribution of this paper: firstly, the existing research about the relationship between top management team demographic characteristics and R&D investment are seldom considering the impact of enterprises’nature of property rights. Although there is some related research, it is a separate study of state-holding listed companies or private companies, and the comparison between the two is very seldom. Based on the property rights perspective, this paper will research the different impacts of top management team demographic characteristics of enterprises with different nature of property rights on R&D investment which will enrich the related research. Secondly, this paper will compare the explanatory power between the top management team demographic characteristics and CEO personal characteristics to R&D investment. It will indicate that the modern enterprise is more dependent on the collective wisdom rather than a single decision-maker. This comparative study is relatively rare in similar studies, and to a certain extent it will verify the suitability of Upper-echelons Theory in China. |
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