A Virtuous Relation Between Vigorous Board and Small Medium Enterprises’ Performance Under the Auspices of Cash Holdings and Corporate Innovation

The contributing concept of vigorous board has been formulated through data employment analysis technique while contemplating seven attributes such as financial experience of board secretary, percentage of board meetings, CEO duality, foreign experience of board members, foreign education of board members, executive members and number of committees. Significantly, the data of listed Chinese SMEs has been accumulated for the years 2015–2021. Empirical underpinnings evaluate that vigorous board escalates the SMEs performance vehemently. Further, the moderators such as innovation input and cash holding are blessing in disguising for SMEs performance, however innovation output remains a stagnant moderator for SMEs growth. Meanwhile, earnings per share, number of employees and firms’ age have been signified as necessary components for the SMEs growth. Our results are robust and reliable through the execution of GMM instrumental panel regression technique. Remarkably, the implication of the study has been elucidated under the aegis of empirical findings.