A Study On R&D Investment And Firm Performance Based On The Heterogeneity Of Top Management Team

R&D investment plays an important role in enhancing high-tech enterprises’competence, improving the economic benefits, etc. As a critical part of the company’soverall strategy, R&D investment and operational management are closely related tothe executive team. Most of the existing research remains in the direct relationshipbetween R&D investment and firm performance; hence this paper tries to explore themoderating effect of the Top management team (TMT) heterogeneity in R&Dinvestment and firm performance from a unique perspective, which has importanttheoretical and practical significance.This paper takes China’s manufacturing listed companies as the research sample,selects the age heterogeneity, tenure heterogeneity, education heterogeneity andprofessional heterogeneity to measure the variable of TMT, distinguishes the differenceamong several performance evaluation methods and chooses ROE, selects the firm size,asset-liability ratio, cash position, industry and year as the control variable into theregression model. Results show that: age heterogeneity serves as a positive moderatorbetween R&D and firm performance; professional experience heterogeneity serves as anegative moderator. Taking into account China’s special institutional background andthe serious imbalance of market process, thus the nature of property rights andmarketization are introduced to analyze the moderating variation of the TMTheterogeneity in different circumstances and to carry out empirical tests respectively.Results show that: With respect to non-state enterprises, state-owned enterprises’ TMTheterogeneity serves as a more prominent moderator; the higher regional marketprocess, the variation of the TMT heterogeneity plays a more obvious moderatingeffects.This study riches the research about R&D input and firm performance, providessome theoretical guidance and empirical experience to improve corporate R&D outputs,to enhance firm’s independent innovation capability, and to optimize the internalmanagement of R&D activities.