公司創新活動對董事會成員職能與政治關係之影響

The Impact of Innovation Activities on the Demand of Function of Board Members and Political Connections

本研究旨在探討創新活動與董事會成員職能的關聯性。綜合過去以往文獻有關董事會特性之衡量指標，並建構單一綜合指標來衡量董事會職能。此外，本研究以研發費用與專利權數作為衡量創新活動之替代變數。本研究以2006年至2010年，台灣證券交易所之上市公司與證券櫃檯買賣中心之上櫃公司為研究對象。實證分析採用二階段最小平方法（2SLS），結果顯示創新活動與董事會成員職能呈顯著正相關，亦即創新活動愈多之公司傾向需求高品質之董事會職能。本文亦發現，創新活動與董事會成員之政治背景呈正向顯著關係，可知高創新活動的企業會尋求政治連結之關係來降低外部不確定性。本研究亦進行敏感性測試，並得到類似的結論。

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between innovation activities and functions of board members. We integrate the measures of board characteristics that have been studied previously and construct a composite measure of function of board of directors. In addition, we use R&D expenditures and patent counts as the proxy of innovation activities. Using firms listed on Taiwan Stock Exchange and Taipei Exchange during the period 2006-2010, the result of the two-stage least square (2SLS) regression shows that innovation activities are positively associated with the functions of board members, suggesting that firms with more innovation activities tend to demand higher quality of the board. Furthermore, we find that innovation activities are positively associated with politically connected directors, indicating that highly innovative firms are motivated to seek political connections to reduce external uncertainties. Finally, our results are robust to several sensitivity analyses.