关键词: 政治治理, 创新投入, 创新绩效, 双向进入, 交叉任职

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of the participation of the committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in corporate governance on the innovation of the enterprise, by using the data of Chinese state-owned A-share non-financial listed enterprises from 2007 to 2017. The participation of the CPC committee in corporate governance is measured by PARCG (two-way entry) and PARCR (cross-appointment). PARCG takes the value of 1 if there is at least a party committee member who serves as a director, a supervisor, or a top manager. PARCR takes the value of 1 if the secretary of the party committee serves as the chairman of the corporate board, or the chairman of the corporate board serves as the deputy secretary of the party committee and the vice chairman is also the secretary of the party committee. The results show that the participation of the CPC committee in corporate governance significantly reduces the research and development spending, but increases the innovation output (measured by number of patent applications and patent authorizations) and innovation efficiency of the state-owned enterprise. The above results demonstrate that although the participation of the CPC committee in corporate governance may reduce the innovation input but increase the innovation performance of the enterprise. Further tests show that the negative impact of the participation of the CPC committee in corporate governance on research and development spending only exists when the research and development spending is too high. The tests also indicate that the participation of the CPC committee in corporate governance has an ongoing significant effect on invention patent and that the role that the participation of the CPC organization plays in innovation cannot be attributed to the increase of low-level innovation output. Although government subsidies can strengthen the negative effect of the participation of the CPC organizations in governance on innovation input, they do not have the mediation effect. Overall, the participation of the CPC committee in corporate governance of state-owned enterprises helps to optimize the structure of innovation resources and improve the level of innovation performance. This paper provides empirical evidence on the role of the participation of the CPC committee in corporate governance and corporate innovation. It helps to comprehensively and objectively understand the role party organizations play in the governance in state-owned enterprises and enriches the literature on the association between corporate governance and corporate innovation activities from the perspective of political governance.

Key words: political governance, corporate innovation, innovation performance, two-way entry, cross-appointment