关键词: 股权激励, 双元创新战略, 行为代理模型, 中小企业

Abstract:  With the acceleration of technological change and the intensification of market competition, the importance of improving independent innovation capability for Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises has been increasingly prominent. Therefore, how to guide executives to allocate resources rationally to the innovation process is the key to determine the effectiveness of technological innovation in SMEs. From the perspective of synergy between institutional innovation and technological innovation, many scholars have actively explored institutional transformation to promote technological innovation in recent years, especially the corporate governance system that can support innovation. As an important component of the governance system, the impact of equity incentive on technological innovation has also become a matter of concern for scholars. However, most of the current researches focus on how equity incentive to stimulate the innovation willingness of executives. Few researches involve how to guide executives to rationally allocate resources, that is, how to influence the strategic choice of technological innovation.
  In practice, when enterprises put their willingness of technological innovation into practice, they are faced with an ambidextrous strategic choice of innovation: (1) in terms of technological innovation path, whether to choose internal independent R&D or external technology introduction? (2) in terms of technological innovation mode, should they rely mainly on radical innovation or incremental innovation? First of all, internal independent R&D and external technology introduction are both technological innovation behaviors of enterprises, but they are different forms of technological sources for enterprises. Secondly, technological innovation can be divided intoradical innovation and incremental innovation because of the different intensity and objects of technological change. Continuous incremental innovation is an important accumulation of radical innovation. Radical innovation can more easily transform technology into lasting competitive advantages of enterprises and help SMEs to keep up with the pace of market changes. However, the return period of radical innovation is longer and the uncertainty of its output is higher. In reality, many SMEs are apt to fall into the "application trap" because they are persistent in applying existing technologies to obtain short-term benefits. Then, will the equity incentives granted to executives and different intensity of equity incentives have an impact on the technological innovation strategy choices of SMEs in China? How to reasonably guide the executives to make more effective decision for ambidextrous technological innovation strategy through designing equity incentive contracts? This is a common concern in both the field of theory and practice, and it is also as the logical entry point of this article.
  In view of this, we use the balanced panel data of China’s small and medium-sized listed companies from 2007 to 2014 to do theoretical and empirical research on the above issues.There are three theoretical contributions. First of all, from the perspective of synergy between institutional innovation and technological innovation, we explore and interpret the effect of equity incentive on the strategic choice of technological innovation and expand the research perspective of technological innovation-oriented corporate governance system design. Additionally, technological innovation is commonly regarded as a static variable of a single dimension. Based on ambidexterity theory, we divide technological innovation into two dimensions including the path and mode. And we explain the influence way of equity incentive on technological innovation concretely to interpret the internal mechanism of the interaction between the two dimensions so as to provide more beneficial reference for enterprises’ practice. Finally, combining the traditional principal-agent theory with the behavioral agency model, the positive correlation between equity incentive and internal independent R&D path and the inverse U-curve hypothesis between equity incentive and radical innovation are proposed and verified, which break through the limitation of linear thinking and provide new empirical evidence for the evolution of the theory. 
Our primary conclusions and implications are as follows. Firstly, SMEs which awarded executive equity incentives are significantly higher than other SMEs in terms of independent R&D investment level, radical innovation and incremental innovation level. Therefore, under the established institutional environment, equity incentive is an important way to promote SMEs’ executives to make reasonable strategic choice of technological innovation so as to improve their technological innovation ability. Secondly, in terms of technological innovation path, the stronger the equity incentive intensity is, the more SMEs tend to choose internal independent R&D rather than external technology introduction. If improving the level of independent R&D is the focus of technological innovation strategy, it is undoubtedly an effective measure to increase the proportion of equity incentive in executive compensation when designing executive incentive contracts. Thirdly, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between equity incentive intensity and radical innovation in term of technological innovation mode, which is the result of the interaction of traditional principal-agent theory and behavioral agent model. Owing to the dual characteristics of "risk aversion" and "loss aversion", the promotion effect of equity incentive on radical innovation does not always exist. When the intensity of equity incentive exceeds the optimal value, it restrains radical innovation. Therefore, reasonable design of equity incentive intensity and contract structure considering different institutional factors is the key to improve the radical innovation level of small and medium-sized enterprises. 
  We introduce ambidexterity theory to corporate governance research, and focus on the choice of path and mode of technological innovation in order to explore the specific ways in which equity incentives affect technological innovation systematically. Although some domestic scholars have used different samples to come to the conclusion that equity incentives can promote enterprises’ innovation ability, but they mostly ignored the process of technological innovation. In addition, we combine the traditional principal-agent theory with behavioral agency model, and introduced the two theory into technological innovation research. The non-linear relationship between equity incentive and radical innovation is proposed and confirmed, which is consistent with the similar conclusions drawn by Martin et al. (2013) and Baixauli-Soler et al. (2015) . But they used risk-taking as a dependent variable. Based on all above, the following research will further discuss the multi-level constitutional factors that affect the strength of equity incentive and the structural design of equity incentive contracts that promote technological innovation in enterprises, so as to provide more abundant empirical evidence for theory and practice.

Key words: equity incentive, ambidextrous innovation strategy, behavioral agency model, SMEs