Risk preference of top management team and the failure of technological innovation in firms–based on principal component analysis and probit regression

Abstract

As an important psychological feature that affects the strategic decision-making of top management team (TMT), risk preference exerts important impact on the failure of innovation. Taking Chinese pharmaceutical listed companies from 2011 to 2017 as research samples, this paper uses principal component analysis and probit regression model to empirically test the impact of TMT risk preference on technological innovation failure of firms from the perspective of government intervention. It is found that TMT’s risk preference has a significantly positive impact on the failure of firms’ technological innovation. The regulatory role of government intervention between TMT’s risk preference and failure of firms’ technological innovation is an inverted U-shaped relationship. Low or high level of government intervention will promote the positive impact of TMT’s risk preference on the failure of technological innovation, and increase the risk of technological innovation failure. The findings of this study contribute to: (1) broaden the research perspective of technological innovation failure. (2) The innovation failure rate can be reduced by constructing or optimizing the TMT and the government intervening in firm innovation through reasonable and perfect technology innovation guidance policies. (3) expand the research means of innovation failure, making the results more convincing.