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Managers′ military experience and firms′ R&D investment
Lang Xiangxiang, You Dandan
2021, 42(6):
166-175.
Based on brand and upper echelon theory, managers, being the decision makers of corporate innovations, play a crucial role in R&D activities. Evidence has shown that the way managers influence R&D depends on their individual characteristics, such as their degree of risk-taking, managerial ability, to name a few(Garca-Granero et al., 2015). Kish Gephart et al.(2015) argues that these characteristics are shaped by the managers′ experience at a younger age, which echoes the imprinting theory in psychology that one′s early experience has a lasting impact towards the future.
Among a manager′s early life experience, military exposure deserves special attention. Soldiers, through rigorous recruit training, field exercises or even real combats, are prepared for various unexpected, highly stressful scenarios. Together with strict military discipline, they are directed to a higher level of perseverance and commitment. When these soldiers become CEOs, the qualities military experience have imprinted on them tend to affect their corporate decision-making, including the R&D investment.
China has undergone several major disarmament activities in the past few decades. Today, nearly 4.4 million veterans enter enterprises or start their own businesses. Military managers are important for business community in China. Study shows that among the top 500 enterprises in China in terms of turnover, more than 40% of enterprise managers have military experience, and the enterprises that they create have good economic benefits(Zhang,2007).
Existing literatures focus on the influence of managers′ military experience on financing decisions and M&As and, yet less on the effect of their military experience on firms′ R&D investment. In an era full of opportunities and challenges, innovation is key to business survival. At present, China is in the critical stage of the national construction, and the overall economic development is characterized by innovation-driven development. As the micro-subject of innovation activities, enterprises shoulder the responsibility of maintaining regional sustainable development. At the same time, innovation, as the internal power of sustainable and healthy development of enterprises, is an effective way to form enterprises′ core competitiveness. Therefore, from the perspective of higher order theory, the keystones of this paper are to explore the effect of managers′ military experience on firms′ innovation and the influence mechanism.
Based on this Chinese context, using the data of all the listed companies on the A-share market during 2008-2016, we firstly examine the relationship between managers′ military experience and firm R&D, as well as the moderating effects of founder nature, political context, property right nature and industry competition level between them. Then we study the mediating effect of managers′ risk-taking between military experience and enterprises′ R&D investment. We find that firms with military managers generally invest more in R&D, showing that military life endows military managers with more responsibility and innovation spirit, and increases the R&D investment of enterprises, yet the magnitude depends on a managers′ individual characteristics. First, if a military manager is also the founder of the company, he or she will invest even more in R&D. Second, when the manager has a political background, the size of the R&D investment depends also on factors like government subsidies(Tsai et al., 2018); In fact, the more the subsidies, the smaller the effect military experience has on R&D. Third, military experience has a weaker effect on R&D in state-owned enterprises(SOEs) than in privately owned enterprises(POEs). A possible explanation is managers in SOEs face constant promotion pressure yet have fixed tenure; consequently, they choose to be more conservative in corporate decision-making(Wang et al.,2014). Last, if a company stays in a highly competitive sector, then a manager′s individual and cognitive traits have a large effect on R&D investment. In sum, we find that the effect of military experience on R&D is more pronounced when the military CEO is also the founder, has no political affiliation, is in a POE, or a highly competitive industry.
After finding a positive relationship between military experience and R&D investment, we proceed to see why. Is it because military managers become less conservative and prudent? Some research in psychology said yes. For example, Killgore et al.(2008) finds that veterans showed more aggressive and dangerous behaviors, such as alcohol abuse, heated rhetoric and physical aggression toward others. Wansink et al.(2008) finds American soldiers who served in the World War II regarded aggression as the key to success. As these soldiers move into the business world after demobilization, one might expect that the risk appetite sharpened during the years in the army will continue to influence their future behavior.
In our study, the question can be paraphrased as "are military managers more aggressive in corporate decision-making". Previous research has quite diverse opinions. For example, using the US data from 1980-2006, Benmelech and Frydman(2015) maintain that firms with military CEOs have less R&D investment. Focusing on listed firms in China, Luo et al.(2017) argues that CEOs with military experience, who may be more ethical than those without, spend less on potentially wasteful corporate philanthropy. However, other studies disagree. Looking at CEOs in the US from 1980-1994, Malmendier et al.(2011) argues that CEO who have military exposure are more risk-loving and tend to prefer higher market leverage. Lai et al.(2016) finds that firms with military experience have higher financial leverage and lower cash holdings. Our analysis lends support to the "more risk-taking" argument. Therefore，we identified one possible channel that military experience influences corporate R&D decisions: military experience enhances a manager′s risk- taking，which in turn，leads to higher R&D investment. Further study shows that managers′ military experience can not only increase the firm R&D, but also increase the number of patent applications.
In general, our paper contributes to the literature in the following ways. First, it adds to the studies on managerial experience and corporate decisions. Our finding that military CEOs invest more in R&D, runs counter to Benmelech and Frydman(2015), which suggests policies like the conscription and economic systems are important to corporate governance. Second, our analysis on risk-taking as a mediator helps crack open the "black box" of why and how managers′ early experience affects firm decisions. Third, we find that four moderators-founder managers, the absence of political connections, being in a highly competitive industry, and as a privately-owned enterprise-reinforce the effect of military experience on R&D investment, strengthens the importance of studies on CEO characteristics in corporate finance.
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