A Correlational Study on China Listed SMEs from Board Structure, Executive Incentive and Innovation Performance

This paper studied the effects of executive incentive on corporate innovation performance and the impact of board structure on the adjustment using Poisson regression model with data on boards of companies listed on the small- and medium-sized board market from 2012 to 2015. Our findings show that incentive increases the innovation motive of senior executives and brings more innovation output to the company, indicating that executive incentive contributes to improve corporate innovation performance which is affected by the structural characteristics of board of directors; board size negatively regulates the relationship between executive incentive and corporate innovation performance; duality of board chairman and CEO positively regulates the relationship between executive incentive and corporate innovation performance; and the proportion of outside independent directors positively regulates the relationship between executive incentive and corporate innovation performance.