An Empirical Study on the Relationship between SME Boards Listed Companies' Corporate Governance Structure and R&D Investment

This paper selects 204 companies listed in Shenzhen SME board from 2009 to 2011 as the research objects, empirically analyses the relationship between SME board listed companies' corporate governance structure and R&D investment. The regression results show that ownership concentration is not beneficial to SMEs' R&D investment, and a certain extent of outside blockholders has a positive effect on R&D investment. There is no significant correlation between the appropriate proportion of independent directors and R&D investment, but the board director holding a CEO concurrently in listed SMEs has positive impact on R&D investment. There exists a significant positive correlation between the board of directors and manager shareholding and the investment in R&D, the board of supervisors' shareholding has a negative effect to R&D investment, however, there is no statistical significance.