Zulfiqar Muhammad, Huo Weidong, Wu Shifei, Chen Shihua, Elahi Ehsan, Yousaf Muhammad Usman
School of Finance and Trade, Liaoning University, Shenyang, China.
International Business School, Dalian Minzu University, Dalian, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 28;13:928447. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.928447. eCollection 2022.
This study examines the R&D investment behaviour of different types of family-controlled firms with the moderating role of ownership discrepancy between cash-flow rights and excess voting rights by using the sufficiency conditions' theoretical framework of ability and willingness developed by De Massis. It uses data from family firms that have issued A-shares from 2008 to 2018. They used pooled OLS regression for data analysis and Tobit regression for robustness checks. This study classifies family firm types into two categories, namely, the lone-controller family firms (LCFFs) and the multi-controller family firms (MCFFs), with each being further classified as "excess" or "no excess" voting rights. Both LCFFs without excess voting rights and MCFFs with excess voting rights have the "ability" and "willingness" toward R&D investment. LCFFs with excess voting rights and MCFFs without excess voting rights only have the ability but low willingness to invest in R&D. The study also establishes that Chinese family-controlled firms are heterogeneous toward risky investment. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to differentiate Chinese family firms by their unique ownership structure characteristics in investigating the effect of the family firm structure on R&D investment. The study is a novel attempt to test the willingness and ability framework of LCFFs and MCFFs. Previous studies based on agency theory have tacitly assumed that ability and willingness exist in family-controlled firms. However, this study challenges this implicit assumption.
本研究运用德马西斯提出的能力与意愿的充分条件理论框架，考察了不同类型家族控制企业的研发投资行为，以及现金流权与超额表决权之间所有权差异的调节作用。它使用了2008年至2018年发行A股的家族企业的数据。他们使用混合OLS回归进行数据分析，并使用Tobit回归进行稳健性检验。本研究将家族企业类型分为两类，即单一控制家族企业（LCFFs）和多控制家族企业（MCFFs），每类又进一步分为“有超额”或“无超额”表决权。无超额表决权的LCFFs和有超额表决权的MCFFs对研发投资都有“能力”和“意愿”。有超额表决权的LCFFs和无超额表决权的MCFFs只有投资研发的能力，但意愿较低。该研究还证实，中国家族控制企业在风险投资方面存在异质性。据我们所知，本研究首次在考察家族企业结构对研发投资的影响时，根据其独特的所有权结构特征对中国家族企业进行了区分。该研究是对LCFFs和MCFFs的意愿和能力框架进行检验的一次新尝试。以往基于代理理论的研究默认家族控制企业存在能力和意愿。然而，本研究对这一隐含假设提出了挑战。
