Can Friendly CEO-director Connections Promote R&d Investment?

R&D investment is the material basis and resource guarantee of enterprise innovation activities,which is beneficial to enterprises to build competitive advantage and obtain sustainable growth ability.As the core of the corporate governance mechanism,the board of directors plays a dual function of service and supervision in the decision-making of R&D investment.The friendly CEO-board relationship facilitates the exchange of information between the CEO and the board members,which will undoubtedly have an important impact on the board's role and R&D investment.Based on the above background,this paper conducts theoretical and empirical studies with the dynamic perspective of dual board functions(advisory and supervisory functions)based on corporate life cycle.It analyzes the relationship among CEO-board connections,board functions and R&D investment.This study is conducted in three phases:Firstly,this paper explores the relationship between CEO-board relationship and R&D investment and the mediating role of the board functions.Secondly,it introduces board advisory function and supervision function,and probes into the intermediary function of the board function between CEO-board connections and R&D investment.Thirdly,the impact mechanism in different life cycle may be different.So,this paper introduced the enterprise life cycle into the relationship between board functions and R&D investment to examine its role in this relationship.This paper chooses 152 listed high-tech enterprises in China as the research object.The results show that CEO-board connections can improve R&D investment,in which the service function of board plays partial mediating function,and the firm life cycle has a significant moderating role on the mediating function of board service function.For mature firms,board advisory function has less positive impact on R&D investment.In addition,the mediating role of board supervisory function and the moderating role of the firm life cycle have not been validated.This study has some implications for firms to promote the board advisory and supervisory functions and improve innovation governance.