Non-state shareholder governance and corporate innovation efficiency under the background of mixed ownership reform: evidence from China

Based on data from Chinese SOEs that participated in the mixed ownership reform between 2013 and 2020, mixed OLS and fixed effects models are used to empirically test the impact of non-state-owned shareholders' participation in board governance on the innovation effectiveness of SOEs in the mixed ownership reform. The empirical results show that: the proportion of non-state shareholder-appointed boards can significantly improve the innovation efficiency of SOEs, and the findings still hold after a series of robustness tests. The impact of the governance of non-state shareholders on the innovation efficiency of SOEs is heterogeneous in two aspects: equity incentives for managers and knowledge absorption capacity. This paper enriches the research on the governance of non-state shareholder boards under mixed ownership reform. It provides empirical evidence and policy implications for optimising the innovation efficiency of SOEs.