The Informal Hierarchy Of The Board Of Directors And The Investment Efficiency Of Enterprises

As the internal hub of the enterprise,the board of directors connects shareholders and managers,and is the research body of business plan and strategic development planning.Its governance and operation directly affect the business performance and long-term development of the enterprise.The existing research on board governance focuses on the impact of the size and structure of the board of directors on corporate behavior from an overall perspective.With the deepening of the research,scholars have found that not only the overall characteristics of the board of directors will have an impact on corporate governance,individual differences within the board of directors will also affect corporate governance.Some scholars pay attention to the role of hierarchy in the board of directors,any studies believe that hierarchy ranks the resources and influence of board members,improves the communication efficiency of board members,and makes the effective transmission and integration of information.The level is divided into formal level and informal level.The formal level of the board of directors refers to the power distribution of the directors based on the organizational system arrangement in the board of directors.The informal level of the board of directors refers to the informal hierarchical structure of the influence and status differences among the directors within the board due to the differences in social capital.However,the existing research focuses on the impact of the formal level of the board of directors on corporate behavior,ignoring the impact of the informal level of the board of directors on the operation of enterprises.Based on the high-level echelon theory,social identity theory,resource dependence theory and principal-agent theory,this paper combs the data of A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020,and explores its impact on corporate investment efficiency from the perspective of the informal level of the board of directors,the invisible force within the board of directors,found that:(1)the informal level of the board of directors will reduce the investment efficiency of enterprises;(2)when the environmental uncertainty is high,the informal level of the board of directors plays a greater role in reducing the investment efficiency of enterprises.(3)based on the heterogeneity analysis of different property rights,it is found that,compared with the state-owned enterprises,the informal level of the board of directors will significantly reduce the investment efficiency of private enterprises.