Study on Relationship between Officers’ Education Background and Performance of Listed Companies on Growth Enterprise Board

Abstract

For the purpose of supporting SMEs with vigorous growth and innovativeness, listed companies on GEM (growth enterprise board) offer a financing platform for China's self-dependent innovation strategies, enriching the multi-level capital market system. Against the background that nationwide enterprise-starting is encouraged, listing on GEM becomes the ultimate goal sought by numerous entrepreneurs and their teams; under this circumstance, relationship between entrepreneurs' education background and operation performance of their companies came up as a hot topic. According to the human capital theory, the education is an important approach and means creating and improving human capital. Education degree reflects the education background one undergoes; therefore, it may be considered as an indicator showing the human capital investment via education. For the officer team of any enterprise, specific human capital may not only affect interaction among the officer team, but also significantly influence the company performance. Based on the human capital theory, this paper, by use of data about 406 listed companies on GEM in 2014 and taking company size and officer's compensation as control variable, makes a study on the relationship between the officers' education background and company performance of listed companies on GEM. Through studying, it is revealed that there exists no correlation between the officer' education background and performance of listed companies on GEM. As a result, it is recommended that great importance should be attached to ability development while improving education degree. In recruiting, a company shall focus on the applicants' ability.