| How to alleviate the principal-agent problem caused by the separation of ownership and management rights is an important issue in the field of modern corporate governance.The existing research on the governance of agency problems mainly from the two aspects of incentives and constraints.The former mainly increase the degree of consistency of interests between the shareholders and the agents by implementing incentives such as designing stock options and performance rewards to reduce the agent’s self-interest tendency.The latter reduces the degree of information asymmetry by improving corporate governance structure and improving internal control.In the field of financial economics research,more and more scholars pay attention to the impact of social relations on individual economic behavior decision-making,and provide new ideas for easing the principal-agent problem in the corporate governance level.This paper introduces the concept of ingroup bias in social psychology.When people realize that they belong to a certain group,they will identify and attach to the group and the members of the group,tend to allocate favorable resources to the members of the group and give them a more positive evaluation.From the perspectives of typical and stable groups of fellow townsmen and alumni,the paper discusses the role of ingroup bias between the chairman and the general manager on the agency cost of the company.First of all,based on altruistic behavior theory and reputation theory,this paper explores the impact route of ingroup bias on the agency cost of the company between the chairman and the general manager.Secondly,this paper collects information such as the hometown and the graduated school of the chairman and general manager of the private enterprise listed before 2011 in China from 2011 to 2017,use the three methods including of the univariate mean analysis,basic model panel regression analysis and the DID model to test the influence of the ingroup bias between the chairman and the general manager on the agency cost from the perspectives of relation of fellow townsmen and alumni,,and draw the following main conclusions:1.The ingroup bias generated by the relationship of fellow townsmen or alumni between the chairman and the general manager can significantly reduce the agency cost of the company.The identity of the same township and alumni makes the chairman and the general manager have a higher sense of intimacy and recognition,and establish an emotional trust mechanism,so that the general manager can make more altruistic considerations.In addition,in order to maintain the reputation among the fellow townsmen and alumni.The general manager will also actively restrain his own self-interested behavior,thereby reducing agency costs.2.The reduction of the agency cost by the ingroup bias generated by the relationship of fellow townsmen and the reduction of the agency cost by the ingroup bias generated by alumni are independent of each other.The uniqueness of the boundary between the fellow townsmen group and the alumni group means that the ingroup bias in the fellow townsmen relationship and the alumni relationship do not affect each other,and the reduction of agency costs by the ingroup bias within the fellow townsmen and the ingroup bias within the alumni are also independent of each other.3.Compared with pure fellow townsmen relationship or pure alumni relationship,the ingroup bias brought by the same township and alumni is stronger,which further reduces the agency cost of the company.The chairman and the general manager are both fellow townsmen relationship and alumni relationship,which makes the identity and loyalty brought about by the superposition of the two groups stronger,and under the constraint of the two groups,the opportunity cost of the general manager’s loss of reputation is higher,so the chairman and the general manager belong to two or more groups to reduce the agency cost to a greater extent.4.Compared with the enterprises that are operated locally in the chairman’s hometown or graduated school,the off-site management will strengthen the ingroup bias between the chairman and the general manager who has the relationship between the fellow townsmen and the alumni.And the choice of the company’s place of business has a greater impact on the ingroup bias in the fellow townsmen relationship between the chairman and the general manager than in the alumni relationship between the chairman and the general manager.In the case of off-site operation,local strange geography,history and culture will make it difficult for entrepreneurs to establish stable trust relationships with local people,that is,members of the out-group.The fellow townsmen or alumni relationship will give the chairman and the general manager a stronger sense of intimacy and recognition,and will have a stronger degree of ingroup bias.Compared with the previous studies,the contribution of this paper lies in: Firstly,by introducing the concept of “ingroup bias”,this paper discusses the causes and mechanisms of the influence of social relations on individual economic behavior decision-making from the perspective of social psychology,enriching the theoretical explanation of the influence of individual economic behavior decision-making;Secondly,by analyzing the interaction between the fellow townsmen relationship and alumni relationship,distinguishing the pure fellow townsmen relationship or alumni relationship and the relationship including both the fellow townsmen and the alumni,this paper discusses the characteristics of ingroup bias,such as mutual independence,strengthening effect,supplements the research between social relations and corporate governance,and provide new ideas for the governance of corporate agency problems. |
