关键词: 高管团队(TMT)异质性, 企业价值, 企业风险承担, 产权性质, 固定效应

Abstract: The business environment is complex, and only enterprises with core competitiveness can excel in this rapidly evolving society. Top-level executives are invaluable assets of a company, playing a pivotal role in decision-making and management, and contributing to its soft power. Managers' diverse background characteristics lead to variations in strategic thinking and decision preferences. Early research is focused on the impact of individual managers' characteristics on enterprise value. However, with the introduction of the top management team (TMT) theory, scholars have shifted their focus towards studying the diverse values, cognitive abilities, and life experiences of managers, which result in significantly different decisions. This study introduces the concept of enterprise risk-taking capacity as a mediating variable, reflecting an enterprise's willingness, risk aversion, and coping ability in risk-taking endeavors. A higher risk-taking capacity indicates greater capital accumulation, risk investment, and innovation input, facilitating rapid growth. But if not managed properly, it can lead to pitfalls. Conversely, a lower risk-taking capacity signifies limited capital accumulation, insufficient risk investment, and inadequate innovation input, resulting in insufficient development and uncertain prospects. The different attitudes of managers with distinct characteristics in values, cognitive abilities, and life experiences influence their approach to enterprise risk-taking, which in turn affects TMT's decision-making on risk projects and subsequently impacts enterprise value. In summary, TMT, as the core of enterprise operations, must maintain diversity within the executive team to ensure future success. Furthermore, a reasonable enterprise risk-taking capacity is a crucial factor in enterprise strategy, directly influencing its strategic direction and future development. An excellent TMT helps maintain an appropriate level of risk-taking capacity, forming unique competitive advantages, and achieving steady and rapid growth.
This study empirically examines the relationship between TMT heterogeneity and enterprise risk-taking as well as enterprise value, using the sample of A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2019 in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. The study also explores the relationship based on property heterogeneity and enterprise scale. The empirical results show that TMT heterogeneity as a whole positively influences enterprise value. Specifically, age, gender, financial background, and overseas background heterogeneity are the main influencing variables. Enterprise risk-taking mediates the relationship among TMT age, financial background, and overseas background heterogeneity and enterprise value. Further research reveals that state-owned enterprises have a greater and more significant impact of TMT heterogeneity on enterprise value than non-state-owned enterprises. State-owned enterprises can significantly mitigate the negative effects of TMT heterogeneity in educational background, functional background, and tenure on enterprise value. The impact of TMT heterogeneity on operational performance is more pronounced in low-asset-scale enterprises than high-asset-scale enterprises. In high-asset-scale enterprises, TMT heterogeneity in gender and overseas background significantly and positively influences enterprise value. In low-asset-scale enterprises, TMT heterogeneity in age, overseas background, and financial background significantly and positively influences enterprise value, while occupational background heterogeneity has a significant negative impact on enterprise value. Specifically, in high-asset-scale enterprises, TMT's overseas background heterogeneity enhances enterprise value through influencing enterprise risk-taking, while in low-asset-scale enterprises, TMT's financial background heterogeneity enhances enterprise value through its impact on enterprise risk-taking.
This study comprehensively investigates the relationship among TMT heterogeneity, enterprise risk-taking, and enterprise value, considering property nature and asset scale as factors of heterogeneity analysis. Additionally, it enriches the measurement indicators of TMT heterogeneity by incorporating functional background, overseas background, and financial background. In conclusion, this research contributes to the literature on TMT heterogeneity and deepens the interdisciplinary development of enterprise risk-taking, enterprise management, and human resource management. It also provides practical insights into the direction of human resource management in organizations and offers reasonable recommendations for managerial practices.

Key words: heterogeneity of the top management team(TMT), corporate value, corporate risk-taking, the nature of enterprise property rights, fixed-effects model