CEO Characteristics,corporate Entrepreneurial Orientation And Innovation Performance

In the complex and rapidly changing competitive environment,corporate entrepreneurship has become one of the effective strategies and important ways for companies to obtain sustainable competitive advantage.Corporate entrepreneurship refers to the process in which individuals or teams collaboration with companies to create new businesses,promote internal innovation and strategic renewal.Corporate entrepreneurial orientation refers to the company's strategic orientation toward internal entrepreneurship and reflects the strength or tendency of the company to engage in internal entrepreneurial activities.Corporate entrepreneurial orientation plays a positive role in improving company performance,especially in terms of innovation performance.According to the upper echelons theory,CEO is the core decision maker of the top management team.Its education level,professional background,functional background,and political connections affect the corporate entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance.At the same time,according to agency theory,CEO's motivation to maximize personal interests may exceed the company value,thus causing agency problems.CEO entrenchment refers to the CEO's efforts to entrench his position,ensure his own power and interests,showing entrenched motives in the company's business management and CEO rely on the existing power to take corresponding entrenched behavior.CEO entrenchment weakened the positive effect of corporate entrepreneurial orientation on innovation performance.Using panel analysis and computer-aided text analysis(CATA)on 138 Chinese listed firms between 2008 and 2014.From the perspectives of upper echelons theory,attention-based view,agent theory and CEO entrenchment theory,this paper empirically analyses the influence of CEO characteristics and corporate entrepreneurial orientation on innovation performance,as well as the moderating role of CEO entrenchment and the mediating role of corporate entrepreneurial orientation.Research indicates that,first of all,CEO's education level,technical(science and engineering)professional background,output-oriented functional background,and relationship with the government have a positive impact on corporate entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance.Second,The corporate entrepreneurial orientation enhances innovation performance and this positive effect is reduced when CEOs are entrenched.Specifically,when CEOs are entrenched by following characteristics,the positive relationship is weakened.Due to substantial ownership that provides CEOs too much decision-making power,hold a post for a long time and CEO also serves as chairman.Finally,corporate entrepreneurial orientation plays a mediating role between CEO characteristics and innovation performance.Contributions are as follows: First,from the perspective of management cognition and the relationship between CEO and top management team,we analyze the negative impact of CEO entrenchment on the relationship between corporate entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance,it provides a new view and evidence for understanding CEO entrenchment research.Second,by introducing corporate entrepreneurial orientation and attention-based view,we provide a new perspective to understand the internal mechanism of CEO characteristics affecting innovation performance.Finally,we use CATA to measure corporate entrepreneurial orientation,which provides a new option for the research of corporate entrepreneurial orientation by using second-hand data.This research has a positive guiding role for companies to improve innovation performance and promote corporate governance.