Study On Executive Gender?pyramid Structure And The Influence Of R&D Expenditure

With the advent of the era of economic globalization and the promotion of the supply side reform,it is urgent to eliminate backward production capacity,creating new sources of economic growth,achieving technological innovation and promoting economic development.As an important component of national innovation systems,the R&D investment of Enterprises related to their long-term development.However,R&D investment is different from others,having the characteristics of high risk?high cost?long period and uncertain benefit.Along with the R&D activities increasing,enterprises should not only pay attention to the benefit of R&D activities but also focus on the risk of them.As the mainstay of enterprise' strategic decisions,executive team has important effect on investment decisions,and gender difference is the most obvious feature of executives.Under the pyramid structure,existing the internal control issues,the actual controller impact the behavior of executives.Compared with the male executives,female executives are risk-averse,and are more conservative and prudent in acting styles.Their influence degree by actual controller are different from men.In recent years,more and more women members joining the corporate top executives,they prove the female leadership in enterprises can also creat business value.Therefore,this paper combine the 1st generation agent problem and the 2nd generation agent problem,exploring the relation of the executive gender and pyramid structure to R&D investment intensity and their mutual moderating effect to R&D investment.This article analysis how executive gender and pyramid structure influence the enterprises' R&D expenditure from the perspective of upper echelons theory and behavioral finance theory.We selected the data of Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges' listed companies from 2010 to 2015 as research samples and collected 7972 groups' observations.We combined the literature analysis method and empirical study method to examine this thesis.The result of the study showed that: comparing with the male executives,female executives(female Chairman,CEO,CFO and directors)behave more conservatively and moderately,significantly reducing the intensity of R&D investment;comparing with no-pyramid structure,pyramid structure significantly reduce the R&D inclination.Further research found that pyramid structure can ease low R&D policy of female executives,and female executives weaken entrenchment motivations of pyramid structure.By the conclusion,we believe that the enterprises should pay attention to both the benefit and risk of R&D investment activities.The corporations should not discriminate against women while setting up top management team and they should try to match their executive team on gender rationally.Meanwhile the Government should establish a good investor protection mechanism and disclosure standards,strengthening supervision,increasing the checks and balances of the minority shareholders on the major shareholders.