獨立董事獨立嗎？由董事會獨立性、獨立董事任期與公司經營績效 看臺灣獨立董事制度

Abstract

獨立董事與公司之間因為不具有利害關聯性，能以獨立客觀的角度監督公司經營，避免公司違法亂紀，減少現代企業在所有權和經營權分離下之弊端，故於企業內部監督機制中扮演重要的角色，然而，近來國內數起重大弊案均與獨立董事未能有效發揮監督職責有關，故本研究嘗試以實證分析結果反觀省視臺灣之獨立董事制度。 本研究檢驗我國獨立董事席次佔董事會席次比率及獨立董事平均年資對於公司經營績效之影響，實證結果顯示獨立董事所佔比率對公司財務績效有正面影響，印證代理理論認為監督機制可有效降低代理成本之主張；在獨立董事平均年資部分，結果顯示獨立董事年資有助於提升公司財務績效，即年資長的獨立董事有更多的策略知識、產業經驗以及專業觀點，對公司財務有所助益，另一方面，獨立董事平均年資對公司市場績效則呈現負面影響，顯示市場投資人傾向認為長時間任職之獨立董事容易與管理階層變的過於親近，並因而喪失其應有的獨立判斷能力。

Independent directors play an important role in board monitoring and been seen as a mechanism for reducing the probability of illegal action and the problems arising from the separation of ownership and management. However, the recent scandals show that these companies face enormous crisis because their independent directors failed to perform the duty of monitoring. There might be some problems with the mechanism of the independent directors in Taiwan, and therefore we try to review it. This paper empirically examines the relation among the board independence, the tenure of independent directors, and firm performance in Taiwan. The result is consistent with the Agency Theory that the inclusion of higher percentages of independent directors on the board can enhance firm financial performance. Meanwhile, the empirical finding indicates that independent directors with longer tenure would have more relevant strategic knowledge, industrial experience and professional perspective, so that they have positive influence on corporate financial performance. On the other hand, the empirical result shows that the tenure of independent directors has negative effects on corporate market performance, indicating that the investors tend to believe that the independent directors with long tenure are more likely to get too close to the management and become less independent over time.