Governance Structure and Substantive Innovation in Southern China’s Manufacturing Enterprises: An Empirical Investigation

From the perspective of manufacturing enterprises’ sustainable development, this study investigates the relationship between corporate governance structure and substantive innovation behavior. By combining theoretical research and empirical research methods, the research selected data information from manufacturing enterprises in southern China from 2016 to 2020 to conduct regression analysis to investigate the impact of key factors in the internal governance structure of manufacturing enterprises on their substantive innovation behavior. The results show that in the development of manufacturing enterprises, substantive innovation behaviors such as product innovation and service innovation are influenced by the equity structure, board structure, and management structure of the enterprise. The concentration of equity structure and innovation behavior exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship. The larger the board size, the worse the innovation behavior, huge stakeholders and excessive distribution of interests will lead to shareholders’ concession logic, thus restricting the sustainable development of enterprises.