Research On The Influence Of Overseas Background Of Senior Executives On The Innovation Achievements Of China’s Transnational Corporations

As an important carrier for China to expand its opening up and promote economic cooperation,transnational corporations shoulder the major mission of promoting China’s construction of an open world economy.The world today is experiencing a great change that has not occurred in a century.More intense competition is taking place in the international market.Innovation is the core weapon for transnational corporations to face competition.As decision-makers,senior managers’ personal characteristics will directly affect the innovative activities and achievements of enterprises.As a special executive background,overseas background is inextricably linked with enterprise innovation.Can senior executives with overseas backgrounds take advantage of their innovation willingness,knowledge spillovers,legal concepts and other advantages to play more roles in the innovation process of transnational corporations?In order to answer the above questions,based on the branding theory,high-ranking echelon theory and enterprise innovation theory,and based on 6701 unbalanced panel data of 1189 multinational companies from 2008 to 2017,this paper establishes a two-way fixed effect model to empirically analyze the impact of executives’ overseas backgrounds on the innovation achievements of China’s multinational companies and the impact path,The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The overseas background of senior executives has a significant role in promoting the innovation achievements of transnational corporations in China,and compared with the overall innovation achievements,it has a greater role in promoting breakthrough innovation achievements.(2)The overseas technical background of senior executives promotes the overall innovation achievements and breakthrough innovation achievements of China’s transnational corporations,while the overseas legal background of senior executives promotes the overall innovation achievements but cannot significantly promote breakthrough innovation achievements.(3)Overseas executives can promote innovation achievements by increasing R&D investment intensity;Internationalization breadth plays an intermediary role between the overseas background of senior executives and the overall innovation achievements and breakthrough innovation achievements of the enterprise;The depth of internationalization has a masking effect.(4)The PSM method is used to test the possible endogenous problems,and the replacement variables and Tobit model are selected for robustness test.The main effect conclusions of the article are robust.Based on the results,this paper finally puts forward countermeasures and suggestions from the level of executives,enterprises and governments: overseas background executives should actively play to the advantages of innovation preferences,knowledge spillovers,and at the same time overcome the potential team relationship conflicts and the "acclimatization" disadvantage of overseas social capital in the local environment;Enterprises should strengthen the appointment mechanism of overseas talents,optimize the professional background configuration of senior management team members,attach importance to and hire senior executives with overseas technical and legal backgrounds,and encourage senior executives with overseas management backgrounds to participate in corporate governance;The government should continue to vigorously promote the overseas talent introduction plan,and provide a good talent training environment and policy platform for the innovation activities of China’s transnational corporations according to local conditions.