The Influence Of Female Executives In Family Businesses On Corporate Innovation

Since the reform and opening up,China has enjoyed fast development in all sectors.Its GDP has surpassed that of Japan and become the world's second largest economy after the United States.At present,China's economy is facing transformation.Its economic development is no longer dependent on simple factor input and scale expansion,but needs to be driven by innovation.Enterprises need to carry out industrial innovation,product function innovation and upgrading.Most enterprises in China are private enterprises,and family enterprises are the main part of private enterprises.It is very important to study the innovative ability of family enterprises.Moreover,with the development and progress of our society,women no longer only assume family responsibilities.They begin to play a vital role in corporate work and assume more and more responsibilities.Compared with men,women are more delicate,autious and gentle.They can complement with men in work.Moreover,women are on a par with men in intellectual ability.Women are the main consumer groups.With the rapid development of consumer economy,women who are senior executives or even directors in enterprises can better understand the market and improve the decisions made by men.In this paper,we study the relationship between the proportion of female executives and the innovation decisions of family enterprises.There are two types of female executives in the family businesses,one is member of the family,the other is non family member.According to the literature,the two types of female executives' decision have different influence on the company.Therefore,it is necessary to distinguish them when study the relationship with innovation decision.This paper analyzes the data of family enterprises on gem from 2011 to 2017.The empirical analysis focuses on the relationship between female executives and the enterprise innovation.Then we study the two types of female executives separately.As for the robustness check,we use a different innovation measurement to run the regression.Moreover,we study male executives as a comparison to female executives.The results show that the proportion of female executives is negatively related to innovation.When separated family members have a negative effect on innovation,while non-family members have a positive effect on innovation.On the contrary,male family members have a significant positive effect on corporate innovation,while non-family members have a negative effect on corporate innovation.