The Impact Of R&D Investment On Corporate Performance Under The Employee Stock Ownership Plan

In this paper,A-share listed companies implementing employee stock ownership plan(ESOP)from 2014 to 2017 are selected as research samples.Firstly,this paper analyzes the influence of enterprise R&D investment on enterprise performance by establishing a regression model.The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between R&D investment and enterprise performance.Then,employee stock ownership ratio,executive stock ownership ratio and common employee stock ownership ratio in ESOP are introduced as moderating variables of the relationship between R&D investment and enterprise performance,and the moderating effects of these three variables on the relationship between R&D investment and enterprise performance are analyzed.It turns out that: employee stock ownership ratio and executive stock ownership ratio significantly positively regulate the relationship between R&D investment and enterprise performance;however,the moderating effect of common employee stock ownership ratio on the relationship between the two is not significant.Then,this paper further analyzes the similarities and differences of the two relations and the three relations in the two sub-samples of state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises.In addition,it further explores whether R&D investment has different effects on enterprise performance in enterprises with different property rights,and whether ESOP has the same regulatory mechanism for the relationship between R&D investment and enterprise performance in enterprises with different property rights.It turns out that: In the sample of non-state-owned enterprises,employee stock ownership ratio and executive stock ownership ratio significantly positively regulate the relationship between R&D investment and enterprise performance;the adjusting effect of the proportion of common employee stock ownership ratio is not significant;this is consistent with the conclusion obtained from the regression analysis of the total samples.However,there is no significant correlation between R&D investment and enterprise performance in the sample of state-owned enterprises.Moreover,there is no moderating effect between R&D investment and enterprise performance by employee stock ownership ratio,executive stock ownership ratio and common employee stock ownership ratio.At this point,this paper comes to the following conclusions: only non-state-owned enterprises can significantly improve enterprise performance by increasing R&D investment.At the same time,only nonstate-owned enterprises can promote R&D transformation by expanding executive stock ownership ratio and properly improving common employee stock ownership ratio(e.g.R&D personnel),so as to increase the number of innovative achievements,improve the market competitiveness of new products and ultimately enhance the performance of enterprises.In the end,considering that a small number of samples of state-owned enterprises may lead to unreliable conclusions,SAIC Motor is selected for case analysis and compared with BYD.The study found that: the R&D investment of both companies is at the leading level in the industry,and the R&D investment of both companies in the sample range continues to increase.However,from the perspective of profitability indicators,the R&D investment of SAIC Motor has not been translated into any patent results,so it cannot bring the improvement of profitability to enterprises.As a nonstate-owned enterprise,BYD has maintained a relatively high conversion rate of research and development achievements,which has also enhanced the company's profitability year by year.In terms of solvency index,the short-term solvency of SAIC Motor decreases year by year,while the short-term solvency of BYD increases year by year.Generally speaking,SAIC Motor is better than BYD.However,SAIC Motor's long-term solvency has been weaker than that of BYD,and it shows a declining trend year by year.The main reason for this phenomenon is that the financing methods of the two companies are quite different.SAIC Motor's operational assets are much more efficient than BYD's in terms of operational capability indicators.The analysis of the two companies not only validates the results of the previous regression analysis,but also finds some unique characteristics of the cases,which supplements the conclusions to a certain extent.