Abstract
In modern corporate governance mechanisms, equity incentive, as an important way to alleviate agency conflicts, are the primary plan for listed enterprises to manage human resources. There is a close relationship between equity incentive for senior managers and business performance of listed enterprises. By studying the influence of equity incentive for senior managers on business performance on listed enterprises, it can further enrich modern corporate management theories and promote the optimization of corporate governance structures. At the same time, can equity incentive promote operators to actively carry out high-risk, high-yield R&D and innovation activities? Will innovation input have a significant impact on the company's expenses and profits? Can it improve the company's core competitiveness to obtain excess profits? These problems are urgently to be clarified and resolved for the development of enterprises. On this basis, it is of great significance to explore the relationship between equity incentive for senior managers, innovation input and business performance of listed enterprises. This article mainly combines the current research status at home and abroad, and puts forward research hypotheses on the basis of related equity incentive theory to discuss. Taking a-share listed enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen as research samples, regression analysis and mediation model were used. The shareholding of executives was selected as the independent variable, return on equity and earnings per share as the dependent variables, and R&D investment as the mediating variable. At the same time, the growth rate of net profit, company size, revenue growth rate of main business, asset-liability ratio and total asset turnover ratio are selected as control variables for empirical analysis. The empirical results show that: (1) Equity incentive for senior managers can promote the improvement of business performance and have a significant positive correlation. That is: the greater the intensity of equity incentive for senior managers, the more obvious the incentive effect. By implementing equity incentive, companies align the personal interests of executives with the interests of shareholders, thereby incentivizing executives to focus more on the company's future long-term growth and improve business performance.(2) Equity incentive for senior managers is conducive to promoting corporate executives to increase investment in research and development innovation, that is, the higher the shareholding of executives, the more it helps companies to increase research and development investment and actively carry out innovation activities. A reasonable equity incentive mechanism can reduce the motivation of executives to avoid risks, enhance technological innovation capabilities through R&D investment, and ensure that enterprises have an advantageous position in the competition. The implementation of equity incentive for executives will make them allocate more resources to innovative research and development, and drive economic growth of enterprises through innovative behavior.