Research On The Impact Of Pay Gap On Enterprise Innovation

Due to the disappearance of demographic dividend,exhaustion of resources and gradual aging of population,the resource-driven economy has hit the ceiling of growth,and the economic development model urgently needs to change from "resource-driven" to "innovation-driven".This is especially true for businesses.Innovation is no longer simply research and development for the growth of enterprise performance.Innovation itself is also a kind of cognition and matching of enterprises to their strategic goals and current environment.As an important part of internal governance,compensation incentive has always been concerned by the public.In recent years,researchers have paid more attention to the impact of pay gap on enterprises.The theoretical circle is divided into two competing views on the effect of pay gap on enterprises.One view supports the championship theory,which holds that the salary gap stimulates the work enthusiasm of both the management and the employees,thus promoting the development of the enterprise.Another view is that the pay gap leads to the unfair psychology of managers and employees at lower levels,reduces their work enthusiasm,and thus inhibits the development of the enterprise to some extent.In this theoretical background,this paper attempts to explore whether the pay gap can promote enterprise innovation to enrich the theoretical research on the factors affecting enterprise innovation.In addition,this paper also introduces two variables of enterprise life cycle and product market competition to study the mechanism of the relationship between compensation gap and enterprise innovation.Based on principal-agent theory,innovation theory and other theories,this paper theoretically analyzes the internal relations between salary gap,enterprise life cycle,product market competition and enterprise innovation,and then puts forward the research hypothesis of this paper.In the section of empirical research,this paper selects a-share listed companies listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges listed in the database of financial statements of CSMAR listed companies in China from 2011 to 2016 as the research sample.Meanwhile,considering the lag of the impact of the salary gap,the firststage treatment is performed for them.The research results of this paper show that :(1)when other conditions remain unchanged,there is a positive correlation between the executive-employee pay gap and enterprise innovation.That is to say,the greater the difference in executive and employee pay,the higher the innovation intensity;(2)when other conditions remain unchanged,as the enterprise life cycle advances,the positive effect of the executive-employee compensation gap on enterprise innovation will be weakened.That is to say,the difference between senior executives and employees in the growth stage has a more significant promoting effect on the innovation intensity of enterprises.(3)when other conditions remain unchanged,the improvement of product market competitiveness promotes the positive correlation between the executive and employee salary gap and the enterprise's innovation strength.In other words,the higher the product market intensity,the more significant the promotion effect of the executive-employee compensation gap on the enterprise innovation intensity.This study will provide a new perspective for academia to understand the pay gap and enterprise innovation,give investors better judgment basis for decision-making,and provide practical evidence for relevant departments in policy-making.This paper attempts to innovate in the following aspects: first,focus on the relationship between the pay gap and innovation.According to the results of literature review,the research on the relationship between salary gap and enterprise in China is mainly focused on enterprise performance,and the research conclusions are different due to the different research basis and research environment.This paper focuses on the issue of enterprise innovation and studies the relationship between the salary gap and innovation.Secondly,the regulation of enterprise life cycle is included in the research scope,and the interaction term between it and salary gap is added into the model to study its impact on enterprise innovation.In different life cycles,the enterprise's production and operation,organizational structure and development strategy are different,at this time,the same salary gap may also be different innovation results.In this paper,the enterprise life cycle is taken into account,which can make the research results more accurate to some extent.Finally,the product market competition intensity is included into the research scope.Under different product market competition intensity,the salary gap may have different effect intensity on enterprise innovation.In this paper,the intensity of product market competition is taken into account to enrich relevant research.