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| Enterprise Group Cash Distribution, Management Incentives, and Capital Allocation Efficiency |
| CHENG Xinsheng, WU Qiong, LIU Menghui, CHENG Yu
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China Academy of Corporate Governance/Business School, Nankai University;
Business School, Zhengzhou University;
College of Business,Government & Law,Flinders University |
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Abstract How to allocate cash reasonably between the main bodies of an enterprise group is a difficult problem. The parent and subsidiary companies must deal with serious bureaucratic agency problems and information asymmetry. Subsidiary managers have a strong temptation to engage in rent-seeking and land-enclosure. If too much cash is placed in subsidiary companies, this can result in overinvestment. However, because of the fear of the loss of cash allocation efficiency due to subsidiary managers' personal projects, over-withdrawal of funds by parent companies may lead to underinvestment.
From the perspective of the parent company, based on Bureaucratic Agency Theory and Information Asymmetry Theory, this paper studies the impact of cash distribution changes on capital allocation efficiency and the moderating effect of the parent company's management incentive in different life cycle stages. The results show that in the growth period, the high cash-holding ratio of subsidiaries under the “autonomous” financial control of the parent company is beneficial for grasping investment opportunities, but it leads to overinvestment. Salary incentives and equity incentives restrain overinvestment. At this time, incentives to parent company management are manifested as restraining the enclosure of subsidiary managers. In the mature stage, “balanced” financial control of the parent company moderately reduces the cash holding ratio of subsidiaries and alleviates overinvestment. Equity incentives can further restrain overinvestment, but salary incentives are ineffective. In periods of recession, excessive withdrawal of funds under the parent company's financial control results in underinvestment. Equity incentive can restrain underinvestment. In this period, the parent company management uses equity incentive to drive subsidiary managers to invest.
This paper makes the following contributions. First, research on the impact of cash distribution on capital allocation efficiency based on agency cost theory has mostly focused on the overall level of enterprise groups. Based on the Bureaucratic Agency perspective, this paper studies the agency problem of subsidiary sub-managers and reveals the enclosure behavior of subsidiary managers at different stages of enterprise group development. The results contribute to Agency Cost Theory, enhance our understanding of the Hierarchical Agency Theory under an enterprise group pyramid structure, and help explain the “agglomeration but not agglomeration, large but not strong” philosophy of enterprise groups in China. Second, Chinese enterprise groups function differently from parent and subsidiary companies in Germany and Japan, which are connected by a coordination and communication mechanism. Under information asymmetry, parent companies in China can excessively interfere with subsidiary companies, which may inhibit those companies' investment autonomy. This study provides evidence of excessive interference by Chinese parent companies in subsidiary companies, provides empirical support for the phenomenon of underinvestment among Chinese enterprise groups, and reveals the dynamic governance of financial centralization and decentralization of parent and subsidiary companies from the perspective of information asymmetry. Lastly, the literature has focused on the governance effect of management incentives on investment efficiency from the perspective of single enterprises. By focusing on the group level, this paper studies the governance effect of parent company managers' incentives on subsidiary managers' investment behavior. It thus provides a useful exploration of how group headquarters management incentives can influence group governance. The paper's results show how the enterprise group can adjust the headquarters management incentive scheme at different stages of development to optimize capital allocation.
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Received: 05 September 2018
Published: 09 March 2020
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