家族經理人因為排外繼承而有異質性不足、創新觀點受限的問題。植基於資源依賴理論，家族經理人可經由外部董事會連結，俾取得多元化資訊以提升公司創新。鑑此，本研究首先檢測家族經理人外部董事連結和公司創新之關係。其次，當家族控制權與所有權愈偏離時，代理問題愈大，家族經理人從事外部董事連結可能植基於本身及其所屬控制家族的利益，使派出公司之創新成效受到負面衝擊。據此，本研究進一步檢測家族代理問題對「家族經理人外部董事會連結與公司創新關聯性」的影響。以2000到2006年台灣電子業上市家族公司之家族經理人為樣本，實證結果發現，家族經理人之外部董事會連結與公司創新呈正向關係；然而，控制家族之代理問題越嚴重時，削弱了外部董事連結對公司創新的正面效果。

Top management teams of family firms are often characterized as having less diversity and professionalism, which could limit corporate innovation. Based on the Resource Dependence Theory, to build external directorate ties is one approach to accessing different resources and information which can benefit firms’ innovation. However, controlling families’ external directorships may bring two distinct effects on firms due to, on the one hand, their strong needs for heterogeneous ideas and, on the other hand, the potential agency problems related to family firms. Given the prevalence of family firms in Taiwan’s information and electronics industry, we first examine the relationship between family executives’ directorate ties and innovation. Next, considering the controlling families’ ownership structures, we further examine how the controlling family’s agency problem affects the aforementioned relationship. Using a sample of family firms in Taiwan’s information and electronics industry, we predict and find a positive association between the quality of family executives’ external directorate ties and firms’ innovation performance. Moreover, we find this positive association to be offset by controlling families’ entrenchment incentives arising from their divergence between control and cash flow rights. These results imply that family firms with greater agency problems allow their family-member executives to accept at-will external directorships while ignoring firms’ overall benefits.