The interactive effect of the career horizon and power of CEO on invention patents

Abstract

Invention patents are of great importance to firms, and thus understanding how invention patents are achieved is becoming increasingly important in the literature. Although previous research has shown that both CEO career horizon and CEO power are important for invention patents, little attention has been paid to their potential interactive effect. Investigating their interactive effect would be both theoretically meaningful and practically valuable. Using a sample of firms listed on the A-share market of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2022, it is found that there is an interactive effect between CEO career horizon and CEO power, and that their interaction has a negative impact on invention patents. Furthermore, the interactive effect varies across different kinds of firms. This paper contributes to the literature on upper echelons theory by highlighting the interactive effects of multiple CEO characteristics on firm innovation.

Keywords

• CEO career horizon
• CEO power
• Invention patents
• Interactive effect