企业“吹哨人”制度与技术创新——人力资本效应视角

Abstract

Under the new development pattern, the Chinese economy is shifting from an extensive development model based on speed and scale to a high-quality development model based on quality and efficiency, and innovation has become the key to leading high-quality development and improving international competitiveness. The new growth theory holds that human capital is conducive to technological progress and thus becomes the main power source of economic growth. Strengthening the protection of employees' rights and interests, especially strengthening the supervision of employees' legal rights and interests of enterprises, is an important aspect of protecting the human capital of enterprises. At present, insider reporting represented by "whistle-blowing" is becoming an important form for employees to supervise enterprises. The establishment of "whistle-blowing" system to protect employees' rights and interests will have an impact on employees' behavior, which may lead to human capital effects at the enterprise level, and then play an important role in enterprise technological innovation. Based on a data sample of non-financial listed companies on the China A-share market from 2015 to 2021, this study empirically examines the influence of the establishment of "whistle-blower" on enterprise technological innovation. The results indicate that the "whistle-blower" system has a positive effect on technological innovation. The mechanism test shows that the positive role of "whistleblower" system is mainly to improve the enterprise's employee evaluation, promote the accumulation of innovative talents and enhance labor productivity, so as to significantly improve the enterprise's innovation performance. Heterogeneity tests reveal that the positive influence of the employee whistle-blowing system on corporate innovation is more significant in high-tech enterprises and effective internal control environments. In addition, extensive research shows that the "whistleblower" system can improve enterprise performance. The main research contributions of this paper are as follows: First, this paper enriches the research on the human capital effect of the "whistleblower" system and its influence on enterprise innovation. There have been studies on employee whistle-blowing, mainly based on foreign capital markets, focusing on the impact of employee whistle-blowing on corporate capital market performance, financial fraud and investment scale. Few studies have paid attention to the role of human capital effect in technological innovation caused by the establishment of "whistleblower" system. This paper finds that the establishment of "whistleblower" system will promote enterprise technological innovation, and explores the logical mechanism from the perspective of human capital, which not only reveals the important role of "whistleblower" system in the protection of employees' rights and interests, but also deepens the comprehensive understanding of the "whistleblower" system in the academic and practical circles, and expands the research horizon of the impact of human capital on innovation. Second, the research conclusion of this paper has a certain policy enlightenment value, which is conducive to the relevant departments to formulate and promote the specific strategy of "whistleblower" system. The construction of whistleblower system for employee reporting in China started late, and the relevant theoretical research is also in the preliminary stage, and there is still a lack of comprehensive and systematic understanding of this field. This paper finds that the establishment of "whistleblower" system can produce human capital effect, and then promote enterprise technological innovation, which helps relevant departments to improve the "whistleblower" system from a practical level, and provides empirical experience to strengthen the protection of the "whistleblower" rights and interests.