Will CEO-TMT Overseas Experience Differences Reduce Innovation Investment? Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Listed Companies

Based on upper echelons theory, this study empirically investigates the relationship between CEO-TMT (i.e., the CEO interacts with other members of the TMT) overseas experience differences and innovation investment. Moreover, we analyze the moderating effects of marketization process and ownership nature on the above relationship. Our results show that the inverted U-shaped hypothesis is more helpful to explain the relationship between CEO-TMT overseas experience differences and innovation investment in Chinese manufacturing listed companies than the linear relationship. We find that a high marketization process is more likely to enhance the effect of the above relationship; CEO-TMT overseas experience differences on innovation investment are greater in the non-state-owned enterprise group. Further analysis shows that CEO-TMT overseas experience differences are significantly positively related to innovation investment at [0, 0.5279] and negatively related at [0.5279, 1]. CEO overseas experience has a positive effect on innovation investment, while TMT overseas experience also shows an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation investment that rises first and then falls.