Corporate Reputation,Ownership And Multi-seat Independent Director Supervision Behavior

As an important part of corporate governance,the independent director's main function is to supervise the management layer and the major shareholders of listed companies to prevent the problem of “insider control” and “big shareholder interests of small shareholders”,not only make the company get great improvement in governance structure,but also make the minority shareholders have some protection in equity.With the development of the independent director system,independent directors serve in several listed companies has become more and more common,and the phenomenon has aroused the close attention of scholars.In 2014,the association of Chinese listed companies released “The guidelines for the performance of independent directors of listed companies”,limiting the independent director mostly working in 5 listed companies at the same time,so as to ensure sufficient time and energy to perform duties.For the multi-seat independent directors' role in the management of listed companies,the academic circles have not yet reached the same conclusion.Scholars mainly have two opposite views,that's "reputation hypothesis" and "busy hypothesis",but both of these views imply that multi-seat independent directors have invested the same amount of time and energy in all companies which they work in.The time and energy of multi-seat independent directors is limited,it has very important practical significance to explore how multi-seat independent directors allocate their time and energy to the company in order to help listed companies effectively encourage independent directors to invest more time and energy and then improve the corporate governance mechanism and protect the interests of minority shareholders.According to Reputation Theory and Incentive Restraint Theory,reputation has a strong incentive effect on independent directors to perform their duties actively,so this paper takes the data of independent directors of multi-seat(an independent director work in two or more listed companies at the same time)listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2016 as the research sample,and detailed analysis and research the influence of corporate reputation on the supervision behavior of multi-seat independent directors.Corporate reputation is measured by the size of the company,multi-seat independent directors' supervision behavior is measured in proportion to their non-attendance at board meetings.The empirical test find that if the relative reputation of the company is higher in allthe companies which multi-seat independent directors work in,the multi-seat independent directors tend to invest more time and energy,the proportion of multi-seat independent director's non-attendance is smaller,that's the greater the likelihood that a multi-seat independent director will attend the company's board meeting in person.Conversely,if the company has a lower reputation,the less time and energy the independent directors will invest,the proportion of multi-seat independent director's non-attendance is greater.Considering the difference in the actual control of human nature of listed companies,there are also differences in corporate governance characteristics,and the reputation is different in different types of companies,so this paper further investigates whether the influence of corporate reputation on the supervision behavior of multi-seat independent directors is different under different property rights.The results show that,compared with state-owned holding listed companies,in non-state-owned listed companies,the reputation of the company has more influence on the supervision of independent directors.The company's reputation can play a better role in motivating the independent directors of multi-seats in the non-state-owned listed companies.In this paper,the time and energy distribution of independent directors of multi-seats are studied in detail,the study find that the time and energy distribution of multi-seat independent directors is influenced by the company's reputation,the higher the company's reputation,the more time and energy multi-seat independent directors will invest,what's more it's more obvious in non-state-owned listed companies.The paper not only riches the studies on the behavior characteristics of multi seat independent directors and corporate reputation,but also provides some valuable references for the selection and incentive of independent directors of listed companies.