Leon van Jaarsveldt, a project assistant professor at the Global MBA program of the College of Management, presented a paper as part of the SEED project on December 1, 2023. The paper, titled “CEO Regulatory Focus and Firm Innovation”, explores the relationship between CEO mindset and firm innovation and is co-authored by Professor Wen-Hsin Hsu.

The paper applies regulatory focus theory to analyze the shareholder letters of CEOs from S&P 1500 firms from 2019 to 2022. The theory suggests two distinct mindsets: promotion-focus, oriented toward achieving gains and aspirations, and prevention-focus, oriented toward avoiding losses and fulfilling obligations. The paper measures the level of these mindsets using textual analysis and correlates them with the innovation level of the firms, measured using patent counts and citations from the USPTO database.

The paper finds that firms with CEOs higher in prevention focus have more patents and patent citations. This suggests that prevention-focused CEOs may be more diligent in pursuing innovation. The paper also finds that CEO incentive compensation positively moderates the relationship between prevention focus and innovation, while it has no effect on the relationship between promotion focus and innovation.

The paper provides a perspective on the potential benefits of prevention-focused CEOs and has implications for board selection, CEO compensation, and innovation strategy.

GMBA的專案助理教授堯里昂於2023年12月1日以種子計畫(SEED project)成員身分發表了論文。論文名為「經理人調節與創新」，探討CEO心態與企業創新之間的關係，共同作者為許文馨教授。

該論文應用調節定向理論來分析2019年至2022年S&P 1500公司的CEO股東信函。該理論認為有兩種不同的心態：導向收益實現和願景的促進型焦點，以及導向避免損失和履行義務的預防型焦點。該論文使用文本分析來衡量這些心態的程度，並將它們與企業的創新程度相關聯，後者引用USPTO數據庫中專利數量和引用次數。

該論文發現，具有較高預防型焦點的CEO所領導的公司擁有更多的專利和專利引用。這表明預防型焦點的CEO在追求創新方面可能更加勤奮。該論文還發現，CEO的獎勵性薪酬正向調節預防型焦點與創新之間的關係，對預防型焦點與創新之間的關係則沒有影響。

該論文提供了預防型焦點CEO可能帶來的潛在好處的觀點，並對董事會選舉、CEO薪酬和創新策略有影響。

撰文者／堯里昂