“海归”高管与企业技术创新

近年来，有学者尝试沿袭高阶梯队理论逻辑，探讨企业高级管理人员的海外经历与企业创新决策之间的关系。但是，“海归”高管如何对企业创新产生积极作用却鲜有相关实证研究。尤其是在构建国内国际双循环新发展格局背景下，企业作为推动区域高质量发展的众多积极主体之一，“海归”高管的双重社会资本优势如何在创新激励中发挥作用，其人力资本价值走向引领创新驱动发展的投放方式，值得深入研究。文章基于高阶梯队和社会资本理论，从企业技术创新的研究视角探讨了高管“海归”对企业技术创新的影响效应和机理，检验了企业产权性质对二者间关系的调节作用以及资源松弛状态在二者关系间的中介作用。在“海归”高管与人力资本优势、与企业创新投资等理论分析基础上，提出三个研究假设：与本土高管相比较，关于企业的研发投入，“海归”高管的意愿性更强；与国有企业相比较，民营企业中“海归”高管对研发投入的积极作用表现更明显；资源松弛在“海归”高管和企业创新之间存在中介效应，“海归”高管增加了企业资源松弛度，进而提升研发投资水平。通过WIND数据库和CSMAR数据库，获取2008年至2016年期间深交所和上交所的中国A股上市公司数据作为研究对象，并设定5个研究模型分别用以度量“海归”高管与企业技术创新的影响，检验“企业产权性质”对“海归”高管与企业技术创新之间关系的调节作用，检验“企业资源松弛度”在“海归”高管与企业技术创新之间的中介效应。研究结果表明，“海归”高管与企业技术创新水平存在着正相关关系，且效果十分显著。企业聘用“海归”高管后，R&D投入显著提高，企业技术创新显著增强；与国有企业相比较，民营企业中“海归”高管的积极研发投入促进企业技术创新效应更明显；“海归”高管通过增加企业资源松弛这一中介路径推动提升R&D投资水平，促进企业技术创新。进一步回归分析表明雇佣“海归”高管的企业，其企业技术创新水平显著高于没有“海归”高管就职的企业，企业“海归”高管在高管团队中所占比例越大，越能够推动企业技术创新。研究还发现，相较于“海归”高管早期在海外求学的经历，其海外工作的经历对促进企业技术创新效果更明显。研究结论从企业创新的视角揭示了“海归”高管的创新驱动引领作为独特的人力资本对企业技术创新的促进作用，并从企业自底向上的维度提出了我国积极引进海外人才的发展策略。

Returnee executives and enterprise technology innovation

In recent years, some scholars have tried to follow the logic of the upper echelons theory to investigate the relationship between the overseas experience of executives and the innovation decision-making of enterprises. However, there are few empirical studies on how the returnee executives exert positive effects on enterprise innovation. Especially in the context of domestic-international dual circulation development, enterprises are among the many active subjects to promote regional high-quality development. Hence, it is worthy of further study how the dual social capital advantages of returnee executives play a role in innovation incentives and how their human capital values are invested to lead innovation-driven development. Based on the upper echelons theory and the social capital theory, this paper discusses the effects and mechanisms of returnee executives on regional high-quality development from a perspective of enterprise technology innovation, and inspects the regulating effect of enterprise ownership on their relationship and the mediating effect of resource slackness. Based on the theoretical analyses of human capital advantages and enterprise innovation investments, three research hypotheses are proposed:H1, returnee executives are more willing to invest in R&D as compared with local executives; H2, the positive effects of returnee executives on investment in R&D is more obvious in private enterprises than in state-owned enterprises; H3, resource slackness has a mediating effect between returnee executives and enterprise innovation, and returnee executives increase the R&D investment through increasing the degree of resource slackness. The data of China''s A-share listed companies in Shenzhen Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2008 to 2016 is obtained from the WIND database and the CSMAR database as the research object. Five research models are built to measure the impact of returnee executives on enterprise technology innovation, to inspect the regulating effect of the enterprise ownership on the relationship between returnee executives and enterprise technology innovation, and to investigate the mediating effect of resource slackness between returnee executives and enterprise technology innovation, respectively. The results show that there is a positive correlation between returnee executives and enterprise technology innovation level, and the effect is very significant. R&D investments of enterprises increase significantly, and technological innovation improves significantly after returnee executives are hired. The positive R&D investment of returnee executives has more obvious effects on promoting enterprise technology innovation in private enterprises than in state-owned enterprises. Returnee executives promote the level of R&D investment and hence enterprise technology innovation through increasing the enterprise resource slackness. Further regression analyses show that the enterprise technology innovation level of enterprises employing returnee executives is significantly higher than that of enterprises without returnee executives. The greater the proportion of returnee executives in the executive team, the more capable of promoting enterprise technology innovation. Moreover, the study finds out that compared with the early overseas study experiences, the overseas work experiences of returnee executives have more significant effects on promoting regional enterprise technology innovation. The conclusions reveal the promoting effect of innovation-driven leadership of returnee executives as a unique human capital on enterprise technology innovation from the perspective of enterprise innovation and put forward the development strategy of actively introducing overseas talents from the bottom-up dimension of enterprises.