Growth Opportunities, Agency Conflicts, and the Effectiveness of Busy Outside Directors

由企業成長機會與代理衝突分析獨立董事兼任與公司績效之相關性

陳家偉(Chia-Wei Chen)

《財務金融學刊》 17卷4期 (2009/12) Pp. 123-151

https://doi.org/10.6545/JFS.2009.17(4).5

摘要

獨立董事兼任其它公司之董事職位是否會影響公司績效？學術上關於此議題的探討始終缺乏一致性的結論。兼任其它董事職位一方面暗示了該董事的能力及專業但是同時也可能限制該董事的可分配時間來有效監督經理人。本文透過近幾年的資料試著證明這個缺乏一致性的結論是因為忽略了衡量兼任其它公司董事的成本及價值。進一步而言，公司本身的特質決定了獨立董事兼任情形與公司價值的相互關係：當公司潛在嚴重的僱傭問題時，獨立董事兼任其它公司董事將無法扮演好一個監督的角色，以至於損害投資人的權益；相反的，當僱傭問題不存在或較不嚴重以及公司具有高度成長空間時，兼任其它公司董事賦予了獨立董事豐富的經驗及知識，使獨立董事成為公司重要的咨詢對象。本文之實證結果不僅解釋了為何獨立董事兼任情形及公司價值潛在著不一致的關條，另一方面，我們也提供了一套如何衡量獨立董事的方法。最後本文之結論亦透露：限制獨立董事兼任其它董事可能也限制了獨立董事的潛在價值。

關鍵字

董事兼任 ； 董事會 ； 代理衝突

並列摘要

In this paper, we focus on potential tradeoffs between the costs and benefits of multiple directorships held by outside directors and attempt to determine how firm characteristics affect such tradeoffs. It is widely believed that outside directors of a firm play important functions of monitoring and advising. As a result. the basic hypothesis of this paper is that multiple directorships by outside directors can have different implications for firms that have different levels of monitoring and advising needs. Consistent with this hypothesis, our findings suggest that firm performance is positively associated with multiple directorships for firms with high growth opportunities and low agency conflicts. Such firms would benefit more from better advising while not suffering much from less monitoring. Likewise, firm performance is negatively associated with multiple directorships for firms likely with low growth opportunities and high agency conflicts.

並列關鍵字

Multiple directorships ； Boards of directors ； Agency costs

參考文獻

Adams, Renée B.(2002).The dual role of corporate boards as advisors and monitors of Management: Theory and evidence.Working paper, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.(Working paper, Federal Reserve Bank of New York).,未出版.

Workinig paper, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Agrawal, Anup,Charles R. Knoeber(1996).Firm performance and mechanisms to control agency problems between managers and shareholders.The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis.31,377-397.

Agrawal, Anup,Charles R. Knoeber(2001).Do some outside directors play a political role?.The Journal of Law and Economics.44,179-198.

Working paper, National University of Singapore