Board Formal?Informal Hierarchy And Enterprise Innovation Investment

In the key period of achieving the two centenary goals,it is particularly important to realize the innovative national strategy.Enterprise innovation is the only way for enterprises to achieve continuous development.How to improve the level of innovation has become one of the problems to be solved.The existing literature has studied the impact of management behavior and board behavior on innovation investment,but only focused on the overall level of the board of directors.The difference of individual capital within the board of directors may form the board hierarchy.The existing research only focuses on the influence mechanism between the board hierarchy and the enterprise performance,while the board governance behavior will affect the strategic decision-making of the company and further affect the innovation investment of the enterprise.Therefore,it is necessary for the board of directors to study the impact on innovation investment from the perspective of board hierarchy.Based on the sample of GEM listed companies in China from 2009 to 2018,this paper divides the board hierarchy into formal hierarchy and informal hierarchy,measures the informal hierarchy of the board of directors with Gini coefficient,measures the formal hierarchy of the board of directors with variation coefficient,measures the innovation input of enterprises with the ratio of innovation input and operating income,and joins the board size,company size and board meeting number and other control variables,respectively,studies the impact of the formal hierarchy of the board of directors and the informal hierarchy of the board of directors on enterprise innovation,and study the regulatory role of the formal hierarchy of the board of directors on the relationship between the informal hierarchy of the board of directors and enterprise innovation.The results shows that: the formal hierarchy of the board of directors is positively related to innovation investment,and the informal hierarchy of the board of directors is also positively related to innovation investment,while the formal hierarchy of the board of directors has a positive regulatory effect on the impact of the informal hierarchy of the board of directors and innovation investment.This paper also further studies the effect of the formal and informal hierarchy of the board ofdirectors under different board sizes and different property rights.Through the research of this paper,it can be concluded that the formal and informal hierarchy of the board of directors can promote the innovation investment of enterprises,and the effect of the formal and informal hierarchy of the board of directors under different board sizes and different property rights is also different.This paper enriches the research on board governance and enterprise innovation,confirms the practical value of the board hierarchy,and provides theoretical support for optimizing the board governance mode,improving the innovation ability of enterprises,and achieving better and faster development of enterprises.