Research on the Impact of Heterogeneity Characteristics of Management in Listed Companies Without Actual Controllers on Company Performance ——Based on Regional Culture and Habit Perspectives

Against the backdrop of China's rapidly expanding economy and constantly changing stock market, the dispersion of stock structure has become particularly noteworthy among listed businesses. Even though still a minority, those listed businesses without an actual controller are becoming more prevalent, and their continued growth justifies studying them as an individual group. Management, in which resides the core value of a business, has a peculiar impact on how well a company performs. This study examines the relationship between management heterogeneity and corporate performance with an emphasis on heterogeneous notable traits in the management of listed businesses without an actual controller. Generally speaking, it consists of three sections: in the first section, the mechanism with which the three heterogeneity dimensions, including gender, age, and professional background of the management, affect corporate performance, is examined; in the second section, the black box of the process through which team cooperation, a mediating variable, affects corporate performance in terms of the three heterogeneity dimensions and its mediating effect in between are analyzed; in the last section, based on the above study, a further analysis is made into the moderating effect of moderating variables such as regional cultural and habit differences in China on the mediating variable, as well as the conditions under which moderating variables can affect corporate performance and their functions. This study, covering 229 listed companies with no actual controller trading A-shares from 2016 to 2021 (A-shares are the stock shares of mainland China-based companies that trade on the two Chinese stock exchanges, the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE)), The novelty of this study lies in two aspects: First, it is the first study that introduces regional cultural and habit differences as moderating variables, and it has found that the mechanisms and moderating effects of different heterogeneity dimensions of the management on team cooperation and corporate performance are not the same. Second, it is the first that proposes and measures the concept of team cooperation and has preliminarily validated its importance to corporate performance.