The power influence of executives and corporate investment efficiency: empirical evidence from Chinese state-owned enterprises

Abstract

Previous literature has explored investment efficiency in terms of executive incentives, supervisory mechanisms, information disclosure, agency conflicts, and managerial capabilities. This study focuses on analysing the power influence of executives in the context of Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) from the two hypotheses of “economic man” and “social man”, aiming to improve the research between the power influence of executives and investment efficiency. This study adopts principal component analysis to comprehensively evaluate the power influence of executives in Chinese SOEs from four dimensions, namely, organisational position influence, personal competence influence, industry influence, and prestige influence. Using the analytical tool STATA15 to establish a regression model, the mechanism of executive power influence on investment efficiency is explored from the logic of “financing constraints” and “diversification”. It then explores the moderating effects of equity concentration and independent director oversight. The empirical results show that the greater the power influence of the executive, the lower the investment efficiency. The intermediary mechanisms of this study find that executives of Chinese SOEs can use their power influence to reduce financing constraints, obtain more resources, and make diversified investments, thus generating inefficient investments. This study also finds that equity concentration and oversight by independent directors have a positive moderating effect on executive power and investment efficiency. The results of this study are robust due to the use of the instrumental variables approach. The innovation of this study integrates the measurement of executive power influence in the particular context of SOEs and analyzes its impact on investment efficiency. It enriches the study of factors influencing executive power and corporate investment efficiency.