Monetary incentives and innovation in Chinese SMEs

Daniel Shapiro, Yao Tang, Miaojun Wang () and Weiying Zhang

Asian Business & Management, 2017, vol. 16, issue 3, No 2, 130-157

Abstract: Abstract We investigate the impact of monetary incentives on the innovation performance of a unique sample of private Chinese SMEs. Building on an agency-theoretic framework, we find evidence that firm-specific incentives matter, but their impact is contingent on the nature of the incentive, the employees at whom it is directed, and the measure of innovation employed. However, contrary to our hypothesis and the evidence in other countries, we find that pay-for-performance measures for managers positively impact patenting activity. This result is inconsistent with agency theory and reflects the Chinese institutional environment, notably state incentives for innovation.

Keywords: China; SMEs; Incentives; Innovation; Patents; New-product sales (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41291-017-0017-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:abaman:v:16:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1057_s41291-017-0017-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41291

DOI: 10.1057/s41291-017-0017-3

Access Statistics for this article

Asian Business & Management is currently edited by Fabian Jintae Froese

More articles in Asian Business & Management from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().