Employee treatment and firm innovation

We identify firm innovation as a channel through which the treatment of employees affects firm value. Long‐term incentive theory supports positive effects of ‘good’ employee treatment on innovation. Alternatively, entrenchment theory suggests such treatment will lead to complacency and shirking, hence deterring innovation. These opposing views merit investigation since human capital is increasingly essential to the growth and success of a firm. Using the KLD database and patent/citation data, we find a significant positive relationship between favorable employee treatment and the innovation quantity and quality of a firm. Furthermore, we find that the positive treatment of employees improves innovation focus – more innovation related to firms’ core business, leading to greater firm value via the increased economic value of patents. These findings, robust to endogeneity concerns, provide support for the long‐term incentive hypothesis, suggesting that well‐treated employees increase firm innovation. Thus, firm innovation represents a channel through which positive employee treatment enhances firm value.     

Employee representation and financial leverage

We analyze how direct employee voice affects financial leverage. German law mandates that firms’ supervisory boards consist of an equal number of employees’ and owners’ representatives. This requirement, however, applies only to firms with more than two thousand domestic employees. We exploit this discontinuity and the law’s introduction in 1976 for identification and find that direct employee power increases financial leverage. This is explained by a supply side effect: as banks’ interests are similar to those of employees, higher employee power reduces agency conflicts with debt providers, leading to better financing conditions. These findings reveal a novel mechanism of direct employee influence.     

Accounting for employee flows

This paper examines employee flows and the association with firm earnings and interest rates. We use administrative employer–employee matched panel data from Denmark spanning 17 years and hence exploit actual data on employee arrivals (labor inflows) and departures (labor outflows). Three main findings emerge. First, we condition by firms’ economic conditions. Departures predict earnings increases for prior-year loss firms, while they predict earnings decreases for prior-year profit firms, suggesting that this conditioning can help explain the mixed results in the literature. Arrivals predict earnings increases, though only for prior-year profit firms. These effects are stronger for high-paid employees than for low-paid ones. Second, the effects of departures are generally larger than the effects of arrivals, consistent with departures disrupting operations. Third, we find that lenders price employee flow information but only for departures of high-paid employees, despite the predictive ability of the flow of other employees for future earnings. Overall our results suggest that employee flows predict firm financial performance but are only partially priced by lenders.     

Local religiosity,workplace safety,and firm value

This paper examines the effect of local religiosity on employee treatment, proxied by workplace safety incidents. Using the establishment-level data compiling on the incidents of work-related injuries, we find that employees of the establishments in more religious counties get less injured than those in less religious counties. We further find that a reduction in occupational accidents is more evident for establishments in counties dominated by one religious denomination, strengthening our argument on community solidarity and homophily stemming from religious networks. Firms whose establishments are located in high religiosity counties are less likely to violate workplace conduct and more likely to take workplace safety measures. Moreover, firms with more work-related injuries exhibit poorer firm performance. Overall, our findings suggest that local religiosity has a value implication through human capital protection.     

Employee well-being,firm leverage,and bankruptcy risk

Employees of liquidating firms are likely to lose income and non-pecuniary benefits of working for the firm, which makes bankruptcy costly for employees. This paper examines whether firms take these costs into account when deciding on the optimal amount of leverage. We find that firms with leading track records in employee well-being significantly reduce the probability of bankruptcy by operating with lower debt ratios. Moreover, we observe that firms with better employee track records have better credit ratings, even when we control for differences in firm leverage.     

Overemployment,executive pay-for-performance sensitivity and economic consequences: Evidence from China

Using a sample of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges during the 1999–2009 period, we investigate the effects of overemployment on executives’ pay-for-performance sensitivity (PPS) and analyze how the behavior of firms with high/low PPS affects the number of surplus employees. We find the existence of a redundant workforce significantly weakens PPS and the role of accounting measures in performance assessment. In contrast to prior literature, we find that higher PPS is associated with a stronger incentive to lay off redundant employees and to limit future employee numbers. We also find that weaker government intervention strengthens managerial control over the future size of the workforce. Finally, our findings suggest that a heavier government policy burden on SOEs leads to lower tax rates and more government gains.     

Employee turnover likelihood and earnings management: evidence from the inevitable disclosure doctrine

We present evidence that managers consider employee turnover likelihood in their accounting choices. Our tests exploit U.S. state courts’ staggered recognition of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD), which reduces employees’ ability to switch employers. We find a significant decrease in upward earnings management for firms headquartered in states that recognize the IDD, relative to firms headquartered elsewhere. The effect of the IDD is stronger for firms relying more on human capital and for firms whose employees have higher ex-ante turnover likelihood, confirming the employee retention channel. Overall, our results support the view that retaining employees is an important motive for corporate earnings management.     

The effects of employee stock option plans on operating performance in Chinese firms

As a part of the ongoing liberalization of the marketplace, Chinese regulators adopted the guideline called “Regulation of Equity Incentive Plans (trial)” to allow firms to provide employee incentives through employee stock option plans. Firms began initiating the plans in 2006. We investigate the impact of these plans on firm performance by comparing option-award firms with similar non-award matching firms. The change in ROE for the option-award firms is significantly higher than the matching firms. This is primarily due to their performance holding up better during the global financial crisis while the matching firms’ performance deteriorates. The stock price of these firms shows a positive reaction to the announcement, but no long-term abnormal returns. The better ROE performance for option-award firms is strong for subsets of the sample that are likely to benefit more from incentivized employees; specifically, privately owned firms, firms with higher board independence, and smaller firms. After various robustness tests, we conclude that the higher performance comes from the employee incentives, rather than earnings manipulation, a replacement of cash compensation, a binding of employees to executives, or gaming vesting periods.     

Labor mobility and antitakeover provisions

How do firms protect their human capital? We test whether firms facing an increased threat of being acquired strengthen their antitakeover provisions (ATPs) in order to bond with their employees. We use the adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by US state courts, which exogenously decreases knowledge-worker mobility, thus elevating takeover risk and reducing employee incentives to innovate. Firms respond to the IDD adoption by strengthening ATPs that defend against hostile takeovers, especially when they have greater ex-ante employee mobility and human capital and place greater importance on employee relations. We find no evidence that managers strengthen ATPs for entrenchment or takeover bargaining purposes in this setting. Our findings show that ATPs can be used to credibly commit to employees in order to protect long-term value creation.     

上市企业员工满意度与创新——来自“中国年度最佳雇主100强”的经验证据

本文以2011－2017年沪深两市的A股上市企业为研究对象,以是否入选“中国年度最佳雇主100强”榜单衡量上市企业的员工满意度,考察员工满意度对企业创新的影响。研究表明,入选榜单的企业平均而言比其它主要特征相似的匹配企业的专利申请总数高约47%。这一效应主要体现在发明专利和实用新型专利上,而在外观设计专利上不显著。进一步地,员工满意度可以通过提高失败容忍度来提升企业创新。最后,经济后果检验表明,员工满意度的提高可以显著提升员工的创新效率和企业全要素生产率,说明较高的员工满意度有助于企业效率和长期价值的提升。     

员工薪酬竞争力与上市公司员工持股

基于员工持股相关理论,本文考察了员工薪酬竞争力对我国上市公司是否实施员工持股的可能影响。实证结果显示,员工薪酬竞争力越弱,企业越可能实施员工持股;且员工薪酬竞争力越弱,员工持股的锁定期限越长、覆盖人数越多以及员工股比例越高。进一步研究发现,员工薪酬竞争力与实施员工持股可能性的负相关关系,只在外部劳动力市场流动性高和内部人力资源成本较高以及融资约束较为严重的样本中显著。上述研究发现表明,上市公司的员工持股在一定程度上是企业在面临外部劳动力市场流动性压力和内部较高人力资源成本以及融资约束时,缓解员工薪酬竞争力不足的现实途径。本文的研究结论为完善上市公司员工持股制度提供了经验证据支持,同时拓展了员工持股、职工薪酬及收入分配等领域的相关研究文献。     

Employee quality and audit fee: evidence from China

This study investigates the association between employee quality and audit fee. Using data for firm-level employee quality (as proxied by employee education) from Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2018, we find that firms operated by high-quality employees enjoy lower audit charges. The association between employee quality and audit fee is more pronounced in firms with a culture of high integrity. Our 2SLS estimation helps us establish a causal link between employee quality and audit fee. The final validity tests suggest that high-quality employees contribute to lower audit fee by reducing audit risk and audit effort.     

The determinants and effects of CEO–employee pay ratios

We study the determinants and effects of the relative compensation of top executives and lower-level employees. First, we show that CEO–employee pay ratios depend on the balance of power between the CEO (relative to the board) and ordinary employees (relative to management). Second, our results suggest that employees do not perceive higher pay ratios as an inequitable outcome to be redressed via costly behaviors that lower productivity. We do not find a negative relation between relative pay and employee productivity, either in our full sample or in subsamples where employees are well-informed about executive pay and are protected against career retributions. Rather, we find that productivity increases with relative pay when the firm has fewer employees who are well-informed, and when promotion decisions are predominantly merit-based. We also find that firm value and operating performance both increase with relative pay. We conclude that ordinary employees appear to perceive an opportunity in higher pay ratios but the extent to which such perception incentivizes them depends on the likelihood of success in a series of sequential promotion tournaments.     

The residual claim of rank and file employees

This paper estimates the intensity of the value-maximization incentives for average employees generated through the combination of wage, salary, and bonus mechanisms. This is accomplished through estimation of the elasticity of average employee hourly compensation with respect to changes in firm performance. This performance elasticity indicates the degree of alignment between employee and shareholder objectives, and it can also be interpreted as an incomplete residual income claim for employees. The estimated performance elasticity for the full sample of firms is not significantly different from a CEO salary-plus-bonus performance elasticity of 0.1 published in Coughlan and Schmidt [Journal of Accounting and Economics 7 (1985) 43]. Jensen and Murphy [Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990) 225] find that CEOs received approximately US$3.25 for each US$1000 increase in shareholder wealth. This translates to an elasticity of just over 57, but most of these payments come through channels other than salaries and bonuses. Jensen and Murphy report a performance sensitivity of salary and bonus payments for CEOs that is equivalent to analogous elasticities for rank and file workers reported in this paper. While the rewards CEOs receive through salary and bonus channels are larger than those of average employees in absolute terms, these rewards represent comparable fractions of income. This paper also finds differences in the pay-performance link based on firm size. The estimated performance elasticity is 0.197 in small firms and is indistinguishable from zero in large firms. The results indicate that firms use wage, salary and bonus adjustments to direct approximately 5.3% of firm value increases to employees. Although the precise link between pay and performance is not visible with this data, these results indicate that average employees benefit when the firm performs well.     

Employment protection and share repurchases: Evidence from wrongful discharge laws

We use the staggered adoption of Wrongful Discharge Laws (WDLs) by U.S. state courts as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the causal impact of firing costs and employment protection on corporate payouts. We find that the greater employment protection imposed by WDLs leads to higher share repurchases, and that this finding is more pronounced among firms with greater financial resources and better governance. Our results support the argument that as higher firing costs enhance employee entrenchment and encourage rent extraction behavior, firms have an incentive to increase share buybacks to mitigate a wealth transfer from shareholders to employees.     

Performance measures,consensus on strategy implementation,and performance: Evidence from the operational-level of organizations

In this article, we examine how consensus between operational-level managers and employees on strategy implementation affects the effectiveness of performance measures and employee performance. We use field-based surveys and proprietary archival data from a Taiwanese financial services company to answer our research questions. Consistent with the predictions of person–organization fit theory, we find that consensus on the implementation of the customer-oriented strategy is positively associated with frontline employees’ performance. Our results also indicate that the incentive effect of using performance measures in performance evaluation and promotion is stronger for employees with a higher level of consensus. Our findings suggest that consensus is critical to the success of an organization’s strategy implementation and the effectiveness of performance measures.     

Employee treatment and firm leverage: A test of the stakeholder theory of capital structure

We investigate the stakeholder theory of capital structure from the perspective of a firm’s relations with its employees. We find that firms that treat their employees fairly (as measured by high employee‐friendly ratings) maintain low debt ratios. This result is robust to a variety of model specifications and endogeneity issues. The negative relation between leverage and a firm’s ability to treat employees fairly is also evident when we measure its ability by whether it is included in the Fortune magazine list, “100 Best Companies to Work For.” These results suggest that a firm’s incentive or ability to offer fair employee treatment is an important determinant of its financing policy.     

Employee firing costs and accounting conservatism: Evidence from wrongful discharge laws

This paper identifies the causal effect of a firm's employee firing costs on its conditional conservatism, using the staggered adoption of US state wrongful discharge laws (WDLs) that increase a firm's cost of firing employees. We find that the adoption of WDLs leads to a significant increase in conditional conservatism. This result is greater for firms that are more labor-intensive, have higher propensities to fire employees, make more firm-specific investments and have greater risk. Overall, our findings support the view that higher firing costs lead to greater demand for conditional conservatism to decrease investment inefficiencies because higher firing costs make inefficient investments (including overinvestment in negative-net present value (NPV) projects and delays in disinvesting poorly performing projects) costlier for the firm.     

The Effect of Organizational Climate on Sell-side Analyst Turnover and Performance

This paper investigates whether and how organizational climate (OC) in brokerage firms affects analyst turnover and performance. We find that firms with a lower-rated OC have a higher likelihood of analyst turnover. Also, when analysts leave and switch brokerage firms, they are more likely to move to a firm with a higher-rated OC and will deliver more accurate forecasts after switching firms. However, the performance improvements in better-rated OC firms are significant only for the initial years of the analysts’ employment in the new firms. We also show that OC-related analyst turnover negatively affects the performance of incumbent analysts, especially for those non-All-Star incumbent analysts, while these adverse performance effects are also transitory and last for two years only. Thus, our findings indicate that OC only has a short-lived effect on the behaviour of both leaving and remaining analysts, which challenges the long-held assumption that investments in a positive OC will always be associated with lower employee turnover and higher individual performance. We explain our results as arising from the high levels of labour mobility within the brokerage industry and the transparency of analyst forecasts as a public performance measure.     

Do corporate taxes affect employee welfare? Evidence from workplace safety

We examine the impact of tax policy on worker safety that exploits spatial discontinuity in treatment and control establishments stemming from state-level corporate tax changes. The granularity of our data and econometric approach allows us to exploit within-firm, across-establishment variation in worker safety shedding light on the real effects of headquarter versus plant-level decisions. Plant-level injury rates increase with tax hikes in establishment states, but not with those in headquarter states, highlighting the importance of plant-level decisions. We explore three plausible non-mutually exclusive mechanisms to help explain these findings ─ safety investment, leverage, and labor stress channels. We find that in the presence of a tax hike, firms reduce safety-related investments, and the tax effect on injury rates is exacerbated for firms that increase leverage and for firms where employees work longer hours and seasonal workers are used. Overall, our findings suggest that tax increases lead to negative welfare outcomes for employees, with no similar benefit accruing for tax cuts.