The Nature Of Ownership And The Switch Of Leadership Structure And Corporate Performance

For the enterprises, the leadership structure is an important factor affecting the efficiency of board governance. About the studying on the chairman and general manager of leadership structure, theory circle has no uniform conclusion. At present, there are three main theories to explain the leadership structure of the chairman and general manager, respectively is the principal-agent theory, stewardship theory and resource dependence theory. Due to the different nature of ownership, the internal and external environment of China’s state-owned enterprises and private enterprises are also different. Therefore, this paper argues that the resource dependence theory is more suitable to explain the leadership structure of different ownership enterprises. Domestic and international research on the enterprise leadership structure often comes from the static enterprise of professional settings, that is, just study combining or separating the roles of the CEO and board chairman, and this paper will study from a dynamic view, namely the enterprises alter their leadership structure that either switched to a dual leadership or switched away from a dual leadership. This paper will take resource dependence theory as the basis, researching on the conversion of leadership structure from short-term market reaction and long-term performance in different ownership enterprises. This article selects A-share listed companies in the stock markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen between 2008 and 2014 which has changed its leadership structure as the sample.After empirical research, this paper draws the following conclusion: the state-owned enterprises, set the chairman and general manager of conversion has no significant market reaction; from the long term performance, the state-owned enterprises in the two position of the conversion will not have a significant impact on corporate performance, either. For private enterprises, switching to a dual leadership has significant negative market reaction, but when switching away from a dual leadership, there is a significant positive market reaction. From the market reaction, the market is more hope that private enterprises to select combined policy, and this point in the long-term results is to be further verified. That is, the split of chairman and general manager of private enterprises has a significantly negatively related to the long-term performance; and the combine of chairman and general manager has a significantly positive related to the long-term performance. It shows that in today’s fierce competition in the market environment, the private enterprise is more suitable for the selection of combined leadership structure.