董事会治理评价、治理指数与公司绩效实证研究

在优化中国上市公司董事会治理评价指标体系的基础上,对上市公司董事会治理状况进行指数化评价,并对董事会治理评价指数及其与公司绩效的关系进行实证分析.实证结果显示,董事会治理质量趋于改善,独立性有所增强,但整体治理指数仍然较低;行业因素、控股股东性质对董事会治理产生重要影响,即行业的竞争性越强董事会治理质量越高,当控股股东为职工持股会和民营企业时董事会治理指数较高;不同董事会治理机制间存在替代效应,董事会治理水平的提高对公司绩效产生显著的正向效应,由于替代效应的存在,单一董事会治理机制与公司绩效间的关系缺乏显著性和一致性,但作为一个整体,董事会治理质量的改善显著地提高公司绩效.据此提出改善中国上市公司董事会治理的政策建议.     

董事会治理与企业绩效实证研究——以民营上市公司为例

董事会是公司治理结构的核心,董事会治理的效率将通过公司业绩反映出来。文章以2008年-2011年CCER民营上市公司为研究样本,对民营上市公司董事会特征与企业绩效之间关系进行实证研究。研究发现:第一,适当扩大董事会规模有助于提高企业绩效,即董事会规模与企业绩效正相关;第二,董事长持股比例、前三名董事薪酬之和与企业绩效之间呈显著性正相关。     

关于董事会治理研究的国际比较与启示

董事会治理是公司治理的核心.本文从董事会规模、结构、行为等角度对董事会治理研究进行了国际比较,结论是国内外学者对董事会治理的研究较多集中在董事会治理对公司绩效的影响,但所持观点却存在较大分歧;实证研究多于规范研究;关于董事会治理的成型的经济理论还很有限.     

董事会非正式层级的绩效效应及其影响机制研究

董事会非正式层级是影响董事会治理效率和公司绩效的关键因素.以2010年至2012年沪、深A股1 226家上市公司为研究对象,运用STATA 13.0软件和分组回归分析方法,系统分析董事会非正式层级强度与公司绩效间的关系及其影响机制,分别考察不同最高层级董事身份和控股股东性质对董事会非正式层级强度与公司绩效关系的影响.研究结果表明,董事会内部非正式层级强度与公司绩效之间存在显著的正相关关系,这种正相关关系只有在董事会最高层级董事不兼任总经理职务条件下才成立;业绩压力和股权集中度对董事会非正式层级强度与公司绩效间的关系具有显著的正向调节效应;相对于民营控股上市公司,国有控股上市公司董事会非正式层级强度对绩效的正向效应更强,主要体现在地方政府控股上市公司中,业绩压力对董事会非正式层级强度与绩效间的正向调节效应在国有控股上市公司中不显著.研究结果证实董事会内部非正式层级的实践价值,印证了两职分离和董事会团队互补的积极效应,为优化董事会治理等提供理论支持.     

我国上市公司董事会效率与公司绩效的实证研究

董事会效率是指董事会各项职能发挥的效果,包括董事会的制度建设、董事会的结构设置、董事会战略决策能力以及对管理层经营行为的监控效率。本文从影响董事会效率的因素出发,以我国上市公司2000-2003年样本公司为统计数据,对董事会效率进行了实证研究。首先,通过董事会效率的各因素与公司绩效之间的多元回归分析,建立了董事会效率的测评模型,借助该模型可对我国上市公司的董事会效率实施测评。利用董事会效率测评结果,对我国上市公司的董事会效率与公司绩效的关联关系进行实证研究。研究结果显示,董事会效率与公司绩效之间存在正相关关系,公司绩效会随着董事会效率的增强而提高。同时结果表明,目前我国上市公司董事会效率普遍偏低。因而,提高我国上市公司董事会效率需要设置合理的董事会规模、保持适当的独立董事比例、提高董事会决策效率、增大董事持股比例以及提升董事会对管理层的监控效率。     

董事会规模、内生性与公司绩效研究

纵观有关董事会治理机制的经验研究文献,可以发现绝大多数学者都面临着变量的联合内生性问题.重点关注在内生条件下,董事会规模和公司绩效的关系.使用中国上市公司2004年度数据研究发现,董事会规模是一个影响公司治理的重要因素,但是,与现有的研究文献不同,没有发现董事会规模与公司绩效显著相关.这个结果表明,平均而言,中国公司选择了最优的董事会规模.董事会规模在截面上的变化只是反映了公司运营环境的不同,而非公司对这些治理机制的不合理运用.     

董事会资本对公司治理水平的影响效应研究

本文通过构建董事会资本模型,将董事会人力资本和社会资本组合划分为董事会资本丰富性和深入性,并分别考察两者对公司治理水平的影响效应。基于代理理论和资源依赖理论观点,我们通过布罗异质性指数来考察董事会资本丰富性,得出董事会资本丰富性对公司治理水平的提高具有显著的正效应;同时,通过董事会成员特性比例来考察董事会资本深入性,得出董事会资本深入性在一些方面对公司治理水平具有显著负效应。由此,本文的研究结论在一定程度上支持了董事会资本对公司治理水平的影响,并认为通过董事会资本的合理配置,可以提高公司治理水平。     

董事会特征与金融业上市公司绩效关系的实证研究

本文选取金融业上市公司最近五年135个截面数据,以董事会规模、董事会领导结构、董事持股情况、独立董事、董事会会议次数作为董事会结构的衡量指标（自变量）,以营业收入、利润总额、基本每股收益、总资产收益率、所有者权益作为公司绩效的衡量指标（因变量）,并对变量进行描述统计,对董事会特征与金融上市公司的绩效关系进行实证研究。结果显示,各变量在上市年份和公司类型上存在显著差异;自变量和因变量存在不同的相关关系和因果关系。由此验证了部分研究假设,也为金融业上市公司提升了绩效提供了实证基础。     

董事会人力资本及其异质性与公司绩效

 董事会的组织建设一直是公司治理的研究重点。基于代理理论和资源依赖理论,已有研究针对董事会人力资本及其异质性与公司绩效间的主效应进行大量探讨。        在已有研究基础上,依据中国国情和上市公司具体情况,选择学历水平和海外经历作为董事会人力资本考察指标,探讨董事会人力资本均值对公司绩效的影响机制及其边界条件,并进一步研究董事会成员海外经历对董事会成员学历水平与公司绩效之间关系的调节作用。将2009年至2015年沪、深A股主板和中小板上市公司纳入研究范围,筛选出1 386家数据完整的公司,将定性分析与定量研究相结合,运用Stata 14.0,采用多元回归的统计方法对假设进行实证检验。        研究结果表明,中国上市公司董事会成员人力资本情况对公司绩效具有重要影响。董事会成员平均学历水平的提升会促进公司绩效,学历水平异质性正向调节平均学历水平与公司绩效之间的关系;董事会海外经历成员占比的提高也会促进公司绩效,而海外经历异质性负向调节海外经历成员占比与公司绩效之间的关系;董事会海外经历成员占比负向调节董事会成员平均学历水平对公司绩效的影响,即随着董事会海外经历成员占比的提高,董事会成员平均学历水平对公司绩效的正向影响减弱。        研究结论丰富了董事会组织行为的研究,创新性地提出董事会人力资本对公司绩效作用的边界条件,完善了董事会治理结构的标准,揭示了中国上市公司董事会在专业化的基础上提升国际化水平这一必然趋势,对上市公司加强董事会人才队伍建设、优化治理层人力资本水平、实现更高绩效目标具有重要参考价值。     

基于策略信息传递的外部董事占优型董事会投资决策机制研究

以中央企业的董事会结构改革为背景,以外部董事占优型董事会为研究对象,基于策略信息传递博弈理论,对信息不对称条件下董事会的项目投资额决策进行建模,运用最优化方法和数值分析手段,探讨外部董事占优型董事会的投资决策机制和微观治理行为.研究结果表明,外部董事占优可在董事会的投资(尤其是大项目的投资)决策过程中起到监督制衡内部董事的作用;内部董事在信息揭示增加的期望利润能够弥补其私人利益损失时进行信息传递,从而促进外部董事监督职能的发挥和投资绩效的改善;提高外部董事的咨询职能和知情概率对内部董事的信息揭示有激励作用,而内部董事的代理成本和外部董事的监督成本对内部董事的信息揭示有抑制作用,进而制约外部董事的职能发挥.这些结论对于外部董事的选聘和配套制度的完善具有重要的参考意义.     

Increasing women's contribution on board decision making: The importance of chairperson leadership efficacy and board openness

In the last decade, the number of women on corporate boards has increased slightly, but the prevailing minority status of women directors implies that they will continue to face social barriers. While prior research has largely focused on explaining social barriers (e.g., being categorized as an out-group member) to increase diversity and its negative consequences, how boards can avoid these obstacles remains unclear. Stemming from recategorization theory, we examine whether and to what extent board chairperson leadership efficacy and board openness (as mechanisms to avoid out-group bias) enhance the influence of women when they are in the minority in board decision-making. In a sample of 146 Norwegian firms, we found a positive relationship between women minorities and women directors’ contribution to board decision-making. Moreover, we found that this positive impact increases when the board chairperson exercises leadership and the board operates in an atmosphere of openness.     

Governance,boards and value co-creation: Changing perspectives towards a service dominant logic

In this multidisciplinary and conceptual paper, we use insights from new and challenging developments in the management and marketing literature to inform corporate governance research. We shed light on the role of governance and specifically boards of directors in value creation in small and medium enterprises. While corporate governance research mostly tends to emphasise the role of governance mechanisms such as boards in the protection and distribution of value, our research problematises such a narrow view and (re)conceptualises their role in value co-creation. By exploring the role of boards as resource integrators within a wider service ecosystem, we propose novel ways in which boards can become integral to firms’ value creation processes. In doing so, we develop a new logic for framing the boards’ tasks and suggest new directions for corporate governance research and practice. We apply an empirical conceptualisation strategy in order to make our findings more accessible.     

Board age and corporate financial fraud: An interactionist view

Unlike past studies which have focused on either executives or boards of directors, this study takes an interactionist view to investigate the determinants of corporate financial fraud. We propose that CEOs evaluate the opportunities for financial fraud according to both situational stimuli and their own personal characteristics. As older directors are often more experienced and have more to lose if they fail in their monitoring duties, we expect them to be more capable and to have stronger motivation for monitoring CEOs closely. As such, we propose that a CEO is less likely to engage in corporate financial fraud when the average age of the board of directors increases (i.e., board age). However, when the CEO is older than the board, the CEO may attach less importance to board age when deciding whether to commit fraud. Therefore, we further propose that the CEO–board directional age difference can weaken the effect of board age. Our empirical analyses provide strong support for these hypotheses. Our study contributes to the literature on corporate governance by highlighting the often neglected roles of board age and CEO–board directional age difference in deterring corporate financial fraud.     

The adoption of deferred share unit plans for outside directors: economic and social determinants

This paper investigates the antecedents of adopting deferred compensation plans for corporate directors. Relying on agency and network theories, we compare the economic and social characteristics of firms that have adopted a deferred share unit plan for their directors over the 1997–2005 period (130 firms) to a control sample. Our findings show that firms where outside directors have higher agency costs, firms having a block holder that owns a significant voting power, firms whose outside directors serve on other boards having adopted deferred compensation plans, and firms that hire compensation consultants are more likely to adopt a deferred share unit plan for their directors than other firms. These findings highlight the importance of integrating economic and social perspectives when investigating the diffusion of compensation practices.     

Corporate Reputation: Do Board Characteristics Matter?

Our study draws on institutional and signalling theories to postulate relationships between board characteristics and corporate reputation. Based on a sample of 324 firms featured in Fortune's list of most admired corporations in the USA, our findings indicate that board characteristics significantly influence the assessment of firm reputation by the business community. Specifically, we found that firms with a greater proportion of outside directors and those with larger boards exhibited better reputation than those with smaller boards and a higher proportion of insiders. In addition, we observed an inverted‐U relationship between the average tenure of outside directors and corporate reputation. However, contrary to expectations, our findings indicate a negative association between independent leadership structure (i.e. absence of duality) and corporate reputation.     

Corporate governance and board accounts: exploring a neglected interface between boards of directors and management

There is an absence of research about what information boards of directors have access to and how they use that information. The purpose of this paper is to explore and theorize about the content and use of information to boards of directors. The paper introduces and elaborates on the concept of ‘board accounts’, which is defined as the information supplied to boards of directors by top-management. The paper locates the board accounts in the Swedish institutional setting and demonstrates how the concept can be operationalized in an empirical setting. On the basis of a unique material of archived board records in a Swedish company, the paper explores the board accounts over a period of 10 years (1989–1998). It is found that while use of the board accounts in the case study company changes considerably over time, the content of the board accounts remains largely unchanged. This raises questions about where and when directors receive information, the reliability of the information in the board accounts, and recent attempts to integrate corporate governance and management accounting (CIMA, Performance reporting to boards: a guide to good practice, 2003; CIMA strategic scorecard: boards engaging in strategy, 2005; Seal, Management Accounting Research 17(4):389–408, 2006). Finally, the paper discusses the merits of historical archive-based approaches in this field and possibilities for future research.

Two heads are safer than one: Changes in CEO duality and venture failure

We study the dynamics of a major design choice in the governance of ventures: whether to distribute power at the top of the venture between a separate CEO and board chair. We propose that ventures are more likely to combine (separate) their CEO and chair positions when operational performance is poor (strong), demonstrating behavior in line with the threat rigidity thesis. Paradoxically, however, ventures would most benefit from a separate CEO and board chair when operational performance is poor. Empirical analysis of data from the Australian mining industry offers general support for our theory, with some interesting nuances. We discuss the implications of our findings for emerging conversations in the literatures on venture boards, boards of directors, and entrepreneurship.     

Board members’ contribution to strategic decision-making in small firms

This article explores how the boards of small firms actually undertake to perform strategic tasks. Board strategic involvement has seldom been investigated in the context of small firms. We seek to make a contribution by investigating antecedents of board strategic involvement. The antecedents are “board working style” and “board quality attributes”, which go beyond the board composition features of board size, CEO duality, the ratio of non-executive to executive directors and ownership. Hypotheses were tested on a sample of 497 Norwegian firms (from 5 to 30 employees). Our results show that board working style and board quality attributes rather than board composition features enhance board strategic involvement. Moreover, board quality attributes outperform board working style in fostering board strategic involvement.     

Does the presence of independent and female directors impact firm performance? A multi-country study of board diversity

This study empirically analyzes whether gender diversity enhances boards of directors’ independence and efficiency. Using data from 3,876 public firms in 47 countries and controlling for a wide set of corporate governance mechanisms, we find that firms with more female directors have higher firm performance by market (Tobin’s Q) and accounting (return on assets) measures. The results also suggest that external independent directors do not contribute to firm performance unless the board is gender diversified. These results hold with respect to different estimation models and robustness tests. Overall, our findings provide evidence that the female directors enhance boards of directors’ effectiveness. Finally, we find that firms that are concerned with board independence, and that firms in more complex environments are more likely to have gender-balanced boards.     

Director tenure and contribution to board task performance: A time and contingency perspective

Director tenure is a topic of great interest in the corporate governance debate. Researchers try to assess the effects of tenure on director contribution, board effectiveness and firm performance. Regulators, corporations, and institutional investors advocate for term limits for outside directors to reduce the risks of impaired governance. Despite the burgeoning interest, there is lack of consensus on the mechanisms shaping directors' contributions over time. We argue that next to the ‘loss of independence’ and ‘knowledge acquisition’ hypotheses, respectively predicting a negative and positive effect of tenure on task performance, socio-cognitive and behavioral approaches elucidate the way in which directors' contributions rise and decline with time. Using a multiple case study approach, we document wide variability in directors' contributions at similar levels of tenure. We find this is due to a series of contingencies including whether directors are novice or experienced, the frequency and nature of board interactions, and the relative power of a director. This variability is particularly clear in longer serving directors for whom we find polarizing results: while some grow stale in the saddle, others sustain high levels of contribution despite extreme tenures. The latter finding is at odds with agency-based assumptions and general predictions from the literature. Overall, our study offers a tentative explanation as to why setting an ‘ideal’ tenure for outside directors has proven so difficult and encourages boards and policy makers to consider the influence of director-level features as well as board dynamics in shaping directors' contributions.