The top management team and enterprise innovation: An empirical study from growth enterprise market listed companies in China

The characteristics of top management teams are one of the main factors affecting the innovation performance of a company. In this study, a fixed effect model is constructed by introducing salary and equity incentives as moderating variables, using growth enterprise market (GEM) listed companies as research samples for empirical analysis to explore the impact of different executive characteristics on enterprise innovation performance and the related influencing mechanism. The results show that the different characteristics of top management teams have different influences on the intensity of research and development (R&D) investment efficiency and innovation output. Importantly, equity incentives play a more significant moderating role than salary incentives. After distinguishing the nature of regions, we found that location factors result in different preferences for executives, which will affect the correlation between executive characteristics and innovation performance. We found that, combined with China's unique political system, the impact of team tenure and education level on innovation performance is opposite based on the nature of property rights. Finally, corresponding management suggestions are made covering three aspects: governance structure, incentive scheme, and measures relating to local conditions.