【摘要】 随着越来越多的女性参与企业经营管理,女性高管对公司决策的影响受到广泛关注,并成为一个重要的学术研究领域。不同于西方CEO中心主义,在中国,董事长掌握了公司决策权。基于中国特殊的制度情境与公司实践,本文以2004-2017年A股上市公司为样本,从公司审计师选择这一新的视角,实证检验了董事长性别对公司决策的影响。结果表明,女性董事长更倾向于聘用高质量的审计师,以向市场传递自身能力及公司经营情况的正面信号,该效应在董事长权力更大、公司信息不对称程度更高时更加显著。本文的研究结论在丰富高阶梯队理论以及审计师选择影响因素等领域文献的同时,还具有较为重要的管理启示。更多还原

【Abstract】 As more and more women participate in business management, the influence of female executives on corporate decisions has received widespread attention and has become an important area of academic research.Unlike the western CEO centralism, the chairman of the board controls the decision-making power of the company in China.Due to the highly concentrated ownership structure of listed companies in China, in the absence of mature managers in the market environment, the chairman who is the representative of major shareholders can not only control the board of directors to decide the appointment of CEO and other senior executives, but also directly participate in or even decide the daily decision-making of the enterprise.As a result, the chairmen of listed companies in China tend to have the highest power.At the same time, from the perspective of organizational culture, the high power distance in China leads to more unequal power distribution in organizations, which further amplifies the power of the chairman.When women are chairmen, they control much more power than other female board members, and the decision-making preferences caused by gender characteristics should have an important impact on corporate behavior.In view of this, this paper examines the influence of female chairmen on auditor selection of listed companies based on the special institutional situation and company practice in China.The study found that female chairmen were more likely to choose high-quality auditors than male chairmen.The findings remain valid after controlling for endogeneity and the impact of female CEOs on audit decisions.Further research found that the effect of female chairmen on auditor selection was more significant in firms which were more powerful chairmen and higher levels of information asymmetry.The research results show that female chairmen have a positive impact on the audit decisions of companies and it is beneficial to play the role of external audit in corporate governance.The contributions of this paper are mainly two aspects: First, from the perspective of gender characteristics, this paper empirically analyzes the influence of female chairmen on audit decisions of companies, enriches and expands the literature on the influencing factors of audit demand, and supplements the empirical evidence in emerging capital market countries.It should be noted that although some literature has examined the influence of female directors on auditor selection behavior from the perspective of board gender diversity, the influence mechanism and results of female chairmen and female directors on audit decisions may be completely different.On the one hand, in the context of the ownership structure and culture of China’s listed companies, the influence of the chairman’s power on corporate behavior is fundamental, which is by no means comparable to that of ordinary directors.On the other hand, existing literature suggests that female directors need high-quality audit services to play the role of authentication and consultation in order to better perform their supervisory functions.Therefore, companies with female directors are more inclined to employ high-quality auditors.In fact, this explanation may not fit the reality in China, especially not for female chairmen.In China, female chairmen, as the main decision makers of the company’s operation and management, who can deeply participate in company’s daily business and master the private information of the company’s operation without reducing the information asymmetry through external audit.Therefore, it is still necessary to discuss the audit decision-making preference of female chairmen.Secondly, from the perspective of audit decision-making and in combination under the specific institutional background of China, this paper analyzes and empirically tests the economic consequences caused by the gender characteristics of chairmen, which further enriches the "Upper Echelons Theory" which proposed by Hambrick and Mason(1984).It has attracted more and more scholars’ attention to the influence of executives’ personal characteristics on corporate behavioral decisions.However, the existing literature focuses more on the roles of executives such as directors and managers, and the research on chairman is very limited.This paper examines the influence of chairman’s personal characteristics on the selection of corporate auditors in the context of China’s unique corporate governance, and enriches the literature in the field of Upper Echelons Theory.The conclusions of this paper not only enrich the literature in the field of Upper Echelons Theory and influencing factors in auditor selection, but also have important policy implications.更多还原