獨立董事特徵對公司決策的影響

The Impact of Characteristics of Independent Directors of Board on Corporate Decisions

本文採用中國上市公司 2007 年到 2015 年的資料進行研究，依據 Harford et al. (2016)提出的一般性決策框架，分析獨立董事的年齡、性別、學歷、海外經歷、政治關聯性對公司決策的影響，這些公司決策包含了盈餘品質、薪酬公平性、投資研發、股利支付、融資決策、績效與風險，結果發現單純以獨立董事比例而言，無助於公司決策以及經濟結果的改善，而獨立董事的特徵在這些決策上的方向則不一致，顯示不同特徵的獨立董事所關注的議題不同，整體而言，獨立董事的學歷對公司決策的影響最明顯，但也會增加公司的風險，本文結果可以作為公司進行聘任獨立董事上的決策依據，公司也可以依照要進行的決策，聽取對特定特徵董事的意見。

Using a sample of listed companies in China from 2007 to 2015. Following the Harford et al. (2016), we analyze the impact of age, gender, education, oversea experience and politics relations on corporate decisions. These corporate decisions include earnings quality, pay equity, R&D, dividend payments, financial policy, performance and risk. It turns out that if we only consider the ratios of independent directors of board, the level of corporate decisions can’t be improved. Besides, characteristics of independent directors of board have different impacts on different corporate decisions because different independent directors of board are focus on different aspects. As a whole, education has the most significant impact on corporate decisions, which also means the increasing of risk. Our research could be used as reference when company makes different independent directors of board hiring decisions. Company can also listen to different kinds of independent directors of board depending on the types of their decisions.