关键词: 内部控制, 技术创新, 创新绩效, 异质性

Abstract: Under the background of the new economic normal and the initiative of “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation”, innovations have become increasingly prominent for establishing companies' competitive advantages and driving economic growth. According to the statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, China's R&D investment has increased continuously in recent years, but most enterprises are not efficient in technological innovation. A growing literature has shown that the external environment will have an impact on innovation performance, such as institutional environment, financial market development, and competition. However, in the case of the same external environment, those enterprises whose scale and market influence are similar will have different innovation performances which can only be explained from the internal of the company. However, prior research on innovation has also focused on the framework of traditional corporate governance theory, such as equity structure, board composition, and executive incentives. Internal control, which is one of the important internal governance mechanisms of modern enterprises, plays an important role in reducing agency costs, improving the quality of accounting information, and ensuring asset security. However, few studies examine the link between internal control and innovation. In 2008, “Basic Standards for Internal Control” was jointly issued by China’s Ministry of Finance and other five ministries, which clarified the three objectives of internal control, compliance objectives, reporting objectives and business objectives. Existing research has paid more attention to the function of compliance objectives and reporting objectives, whiles less to the role of business objectives. While, this paper examines the operational objectives of internal control from the perspective of innovation, because innovation not only reflects the efficiency of enterprise management, but also reflects the sustainable development strategy.Then, can internal control improve the innovation performance? Are there different differences in the effects of different characteristics of enterprises? What role does the five elements of internal control play? In order to answer the questions, this paper examines the effect of internal control on innovation performance investigated by Poisson regression, based on the sample of A-share listed companies in SSE and SZSE from 2007 to 2014. Furthermore, this paper conducts a group test according to the heterogeneity of the enterprises, the nature of property rights, R&D intensity and firm size; and further analyzes the impact of five elements of internal control on innovation performance. The Poisson regression model is used in this paper because the number of patent grants is a non-negative integer, and the Poisson distribution is more suitable. In the field of innovation, the Poisson regression model has been recognized by many scholars in recent years.Compared with daily business activities and tangible assets investment, innovation activities have the characteristics of long cycle, high risk and difficult information evaluation. Therefore, there are higher contract cost, supervision cost and agency cost, at the same time the innovation information is more easily underestimated, which seriously affect the innovation performance of enterprises. This paper argues internal control can improve the performance of technological innovation through possible underlying mechanisms that reducing internal agency costs and information transfer costs. Specifically, in the whole process of innovation activities, that is, in the aspects of R&D investment, production and output, internal control enhances innovation performance by restricting agency behavior of management and employee, enhancing information transmission. In terms of property rights, the management is more likely to override the internal control in SOE, while supervision mechanism is relatively sound in Non-SOE. Therefore, compared with SOE, internal control plays a greater role in promoting innovation in Non-SOE. In terms of R&D intensity, because technological innovation requires a more relaxed innovation environment and high tolerance for failure, the higher the quality of internal control reduces the tolerance for failure to a certain extent, and the innovation could be inhibited more in high R&D investment intensity companies. Therefore, compared with high R&D investment intensity companies, the role of internal control in promoting innovation performance is more pronounced in low R&D investment intensity companies. In terms of enterprise scale, the higher the internal control quality could reduce more the internal agency costs and information transmission in large-scale enterprises, and improve the innovation performance. Because the role of internal control depends on the five elements of internal control, further this paper analyzes the role of the five elements of internal control on innovation performance, and finds that risk assessment and information and communication elements play a significant role in promoting innovation performance. This paper takes technological innovation as the starting point, expands the research on the effect of internal control on improving the efficiency of enterprise operation, makes up for the deficiency of existing research on the internal control business objective only from the perspective of tangible assets, and demonstrates the applicability principle of the implementation of internal control system. It provides empirical evidence for promoting and improving the implementation of the Code, improving innovation performance, and promoting industrial upgrading and transformation of business models under the new economic normal.The research results of this paper have certain enlightenment for government departments and enterprises to steadily promote the construction of internal control system, improve internal governance mechanism and change business model. Specifically for the government, this conclusion provides empirical evidence for the comprehensive promotion and implementation of the internal control system, which will promote the internal control of small and medium-sized board and GEM listed companies, and comprehensively improve the quality and risk prevention capabilities of listed companies in China. For enterprises, the role of internal control in improving the efficiency of business management is clarified. Internal control can not only improve the efficiency of tangible assets management, but also intangible assets management. Effective internal control over intangible assets is can better prevent risks, enhance information exchange and enhance innovation efficiency. At the same time, we must pay attention to the coordination of the relationship between internal control and innovation to find the equilibrium point of them. Not only to give full play to the governance role of internal control, but also to stimulate the enthusiasm of innovation, and continuously improve the level of enterprise innovation.

Key words:  internal control, technological innovation, innovation performance, heterogeneity