Empirical Study On The Influence Of Top Management Team Heterogeneity On Breakthrough Innovation Of High-tech Listed Companies

Technological innovation is the core competitiveness of modern enterprises,especially high-tech companies.A high-quality management team is an important factor to a company's breakthrough innovation.As the decision-making center of the enterprise,the top management team's differences in knowledge structure,risk appetite,cognition and social connections will directly affect the breakthrough innovation decisions of high-tech listed companies,and thus affect the development of activities.Therefore,exploring the impact of the heterogeneity of top management team in high-tech listed companies on breakthrough innovation is of great significance to improving the innovation ability and level,and promoting the construction of an innovation-oriented country in China.Through reviewing the existing research literatures,we find that the current conclusions on the relationship between executive team heterogeneity and the behavior of breakthrough innovation are not unified.Based on this,in view of the inconsistency of previous research results,this study combines upper echelons theory,information and decision-making theory and social identity theory,and selectes the data of 567 high-tech listed companies in China's Shanghai and Shenzhen A shares from 2012 to 2016.This study empirically tests the impact of the heterogeneity of senior management team's age,tenure,educational background,and functional background on the company's breakthrough innovation.Considering that the special institutional background and cultural background of our country,the mechanism of selecting and appointing senior management team members is not consistent,which in turn affects the innovation decision-making and innovation behavior of enterprises.On this basis,a hierarchical regression analysis of high-tech state-owned and non-state-owned listed companies is conducted to test the regulatory effect of the nature of property rights on their relationship.The results show that :(1)The relationship between the age heterogeneity of top management team and breakthrough innovation is an inverted U-shaped quadratic curve,which is more significant in non-state-owned high-tech listed companies.(2)Term heterogeneity of top management team is negatively correlated with enterprise breakthrough innovation,which is more significant in state-owned listed companies.(3)Among the full sample and non-state-owned listed companies,the heterogeneity of the top management team's educational background is significantly positively correlatedwith breakthrough innovation,but the effect on state-owned listed companies is not significant.(4)The heterogeneity of the functional background of the executive team is positively correlated with breakthrough innovation,which is more significant in non-state-owned listed companies.(5)The property rights has a moderating effect on the relationship between the heterogeneities of senior management team and breakthrough innovation,and different indicators of heterogeneity have different moderating effects.According to the research conclusions,this study proposes targeted suggestions to further optimize the composition of the top management team of high-tech listed companies and enhance their breakthrough innovation performance.