Research On The Correlation Between Top Management Team Vertical Dyads Heterogeneity And R&D Investment

As an representative industry of the high-tech industries，the R&D investment of thebio-pharmaceutical industry is the largest in the world. Technological innovation is the corecompetitiveness of bio-pharmaceutical firms, R&D investment as one of the main sources oftechnological innovation, it can guide the technological innovation, promote business growth andpush forward technical progress in the sector. Amidst the economic crisis, R&D investment canhelp firms survive the crisis or stand out from other firms, because the products ofR&D-intensive firms can not be easily replaced or imitated, and R&D-intensive firms are lesssensitive to external environment. R&D investment is also regarded as an option for future’stechnology and market development. So, it is necessary and meaningful to strengthen andoptimize firm’s R&D investment in the bio-pharmaceutical industry.Based on the upper echelons theory and similarity-attraction paradigm, Combined withsocial psychological perspective, This paper regards post level as an important factor of topmanagement team (TMT) characteristics, uses the demographics differences between CEO andTMT to measure TMT vertical dyads heterogeneity, then empirically studies the relationshipbetween TMT vertical dyads heterogeneity and R&D Investment of the bio-pharmaceutical listedcompanies. The results show that: CEO-TMT age heterogeneity and CEO-TMT education levelheterogeneity are negatively related to R&D investment intensity, while the CEO-TMT tenureheterogeneity and CEO-TMT career background heterogeneity are positively related. This paperalso finds that the management expense ratio, asset-liability ratio and CEO concurrently bechairman are positively related to R&D investment intensity, while firm size is negatively relatedin the bio-pharmaceutical industry.