Short and long translations: Management accounting calculations and innovation management

Management accounting calculations relate innovation to the firm through translations where both can change. Based on examples of the management of innovation from three firms the study shows how management accounting calculations rather than describe the properties of innovation add perspective to them mediating between innovation concerns and firm-wide concerns. This mediation happens through short and long translations. In short translations, management accounting calculations extend or reduce innovation activities via a single calculation. In long translations innovation activities are problematised via multiple calculations. When calculations challenge each other in long translations they problematise not only what innovation should be, but also where it should be located in time and space. In the three examples, calculations mobilised alternative propositions about the relevance of technical artefacts and linked this to innovation strategy and sourcing strategy in the firm’s inter-organisational relations. Tensions between calculations associated with technological, organisational and environmental entities framed considerations about the value of innovation to the firm strategically differently. All this happens because management accounting calculations are partial rather than total calculations of firms’ affairs and value.     

XBRL and Accruals: Empirical Evidence from China

We examine whether XBRL adoption by publicly traded firms on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange is related to the level of total accruals that firms report in the pre‐XBRL versus post‐XBRL periods. Our results indicate that the level of total accruals in the post‐XBRL period is lower relative to the pre‐XBRL period. This finding is robust to several controls for macroeconomic conditions and firm fundamentals. Moreover, we find this main effect is most prominent for firms that are most likely to benefit from greater transparency: high‐growth firms, small firms, and firms in high‐technology industries. One interpretation of our results is that XBRL implementation decreases investor’s information acquisition costs and thereby improves their ability to detect earnings management; managers in turn reduce accruals.     

The Relation between Stakeholder Management,Firm Value,and CEO Compensation: A Test of Enlightened Value Maximization

Whether firms pursue shareholder value maximization or the maximization of stakeholder welfare is a controversial issue whose outcomes seem irreconcilable. We propose that firms are likely to compensate their executives for pursuing the firm's goal be it shareholder value maximization or the maximization of stakeholder welfare. In this paper, we examine the correlation between firm value, stakeholder management, and compensation. We find that stakeholder management is positively related to firm value. However, firms do not compensate managers for having good relationships with its stakeholders. These results do not support stakeholder theory. We also find an endogenous association between compensation and firm value. Our results are consistent with Jensen's (2001) enlightened value maximization theory. Managers are compensated for achieving the firm's ultimate goal, value maximization. However, managers optimize interaction with stakeholders to accomplish this objective.     

Managerial risk appetite and asymmetry cost behavior: evidence from China

Managerial risk preferences have considerable impacts on a firm’s cost management through committed resource adjustment decisions. We investigate whether a firm’s cost behaviour is influenced by managers’ risk appetite and find that cost stickiness increases with managers’ risk-seeking. The positive relationship between risk-seeking and cost stickiness is weaker for firms with higher levels of manager capacity. We further find that the moderating effect of managerial capacity is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises, in less competitive industries, and in areas with lower degrees of marketisation. These results suggest that managers’ personal characteristics are key factors that affect sticky cost behaviour.     

The impact of Say-on-Pay votes on firms' strategic policies: Insights from the Anglo-Saxon economy

This study examines evidences of executive reactions to say-on-pay (SOP) votes in terms of strategic policies which could affect firms' long-run growth and eventual survival. We employed an unbalanced panel data from 1932 firms taken from four countries in the Anglo-Saxon economy, covering time periods when different forms of SOP were implemented in these countries. Using Limited Information Maximum Likelihood (LIML) estimator to gauge the simultaneous determination of SOP votes and firm strategic policies, we find that, in line with shareholders preferences, US firms had increased capital expenditure ratio; Australian and US firms had reduced reliance on debt financing; US managers had shifted focus on current rather than long-term profit, but evidences emerged from other countries are unclear. Corroborations also suggest that excess liquidity was shunned by Canadian shareholders, but the reactions of their company executives were overly disproportionate. UK firm policies did not appear to have been affected by SOP, and vice versa. Overall, the varying effects of SOP votes on firms' strategic policies might be ascribed to either the adoption of a specific SOP practice or the effectiveness of the board.     

Opening the black box of management accounting information exchanges in buyer–supplier relationships

The purpose of this paper is to explain the reasons why collaborating firms “open their books” and share management accounting information. We investigate the effect of variables related to the tasks and relationships of single individuals of the partner firms (i.e., task interdependence and analysability, team interdependence and relationship duration) on open book accounting (OBA). Our model controls for firm-level variables (i.e., asset specificity, degree of economic dependence, contract presence, contract comprehensiveness, and firm size) known to influence management accounting information exchanges. By using social network analysis (SNA), the data collected from a fashion firm and its entire set of suppliers shows that the quantity of management accounting information is positively related to task interdependence while having an inverted U-shape relation with the duration of the relationship. In addition, it provides evidence of a positive association with task analysability, whereas we find no relation with team interdependence. The analysis also confirms the importance of firm-level factors in explaining the exchanges of management accounting information. Our conclusions have important implications for the design of OBA in inter-organisational relationships.     

The Effect of Managerial Litigation Risk on Earnings Warnings: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

We examine the causal effect of managerial litigation risk on managers’ disclosure of earnings warnings in the face of large earnings shortfalls. Exploring the staggered adoption of universal demand (UD) laws as an exogenous decrease in litigation risk, we find that the adoption leads to a decrease in managers’ issuance of earnings warnings, especially among firms facing a higher litigation risk prior to the adoption. In contrast, we find no change in managers’ tendency to alert investors of impending large positive earnings surprises. Collectively, our results provide causal evidence that higher litigation risk incentivizes managers to issue more earnings warnings. Our results differ from Bourveau et al.’s finding of an increase in the frequency of management earnings forecasts after the adoption of UD laws. We reconcile our findings with theirs by demonstrating that the effect of adopting UD laws on management earnings forecasts depends critically on forecast horizon: The adoption increases long-horizon forecasts, but decreases short-horizon forecasts.     

Managerial ownership dynamics and firm value

From 1988 to 2003, the average change in managerial ownership is significantly negative every year for American firms. We find that managers are more likely to significantly decrease their ownership when their firms are performing well and more likely to increase their ownership when their firms become financially constrained. When controlling for past stock returns, we find that large increases in managerial ownership increase Tobin's q. This result is driven by increases in shares held by officers, while increases in shares held by directors appear unrelated to changes in firm value. There is no evidence that large decreases in ownership have an adverse impact on firm value. We rely on the dynamics of the managerial ownership/firm value relation to mitigate concerns in the literature about the endogeneity of managerial ownership.     

CONTROL: GETTING IT AND KEEPING IT IN BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING

Proposals to outsource corporate functions often meet with resistance because of control issues and concerns about proprietary information. But proponents of outsourcing are quick to note that many of these reservations dwell on perceptions and apprehensions, rather than on the track record of outsourced projects. In fact, veterans of successful arrangements observe that outsourcing frees up valuable management time and thus enables an enhanced form of control.
The key is to supplement direct, supervisory control mechanisms like service control agreements and performance tracking with indirect, enabling controls—senior team affiliation, performance visibility, interface management, and employee allegiance—and then lay the groundwork for these enabling controls early in the outsourcing relationship. Rather than getting locked into static controls, forward-looking managers adopt a broad control framework to go beyond achieving the expected improvements and create the potential to add new value. The result is an outsourcing relationship that can accommodate change, move in a new direction, and seize emerging opportunities.     

Golden Parachutes: Incentive Aligners,Management Entrenchers,or Takeover Bid Signals?

In this paper we investigate the effect of golden parachute (GP) adoptions on shareholder wealth. We control for the potential effect a GP adoption has on the probability that a firm will receive a takeover bid by investigating the wealth effects for firms that are in play when the GP is adopted. We find that announcements are wealth neutral when firms are in play and wealth increasing when firms are not in play when a GP is adopted. The results suggest that GPs have no influence on the success of a tender offer, refuting the hypotheses that they either align manager and shareholder interests or that they entrench inefficient managers. The difference in the results for in-play and not-in-play firms is consistent with the hypothesis that GPs signal an increased likelihood that a firm will receive a takeover bid.     

Generational Characteristics and Their Impact on Preference for Management Control Systems

Research indicates that different macro‐socialisation results in systematic differences in generational characteristics, which may in turn result in different generational workplace preferences for management control systems (MCS). An exploratory study was undertaken of three generations (Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y) and their MCS preferences in a large Australian professional services firm. The results found that each generation exhibited different characteristics and these differences are linked to specific generational MCS preferences for goal setting, performance evaluation, administrative controls and incentives. These findings have implications for MCS design that attracts, motivates and retains employees, improves organisational performance, and manages intergenerational conflict.     

Managerial academic experience,external monitoring and financial reporting quality

This study examines the effect of managerial academic experience on firms’ financial reporting quality. Using data from China, we find that firms with top managers possessing academic experience exhibit lower levels of both accrual and real earnings management, along with a lower probability of future restatements. This effect is more pronounced for firms with inefficient external monitoring, suggesting that the higher financial reporting quality is mainly explained by the managers’ intrinsic motivation to report truthfully. The results hold when we use firm fixed‐effect regressions, instrumental variable two‐stage regressions, and a propensity score matching (PSM) approach to mitigate the omitted variable and endogeneity concerns. Our study suggests that academic experience can serve as a source of valuable expertise for corporate executives.     

Ownership and the Value of Political Connections: Evidence from China

Research has found that political connectedness can have both positive and negative effects on firm value. To resolve these mixed findings, we investigate the impact of political ties conditional on ownership for a sample of Chinese firms over the period 1999–2006. We find that private firms with politically connected managers have a higher value and obtain more government subsidies than those without connected managers, whereas local state‐owned enterprises with connected managers have a lower value and employ more surplus labour than those without connected managers. Our results indicate that the effect of political ties is subject to firm ownership.     

The role of board independence in mitigating agency problem II in Australian family firms

We investigate the impact of board independence on earnings management on a sample of family controlled firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). Using panel data over the period 2000–2004, we find evidence of earnings management among family controlled firms in Australia, an environment of high investor protection and private benefits of control. Findings show that a higher proportion of independent directors on boards is effective in reducing earnings management, thereby mitigating agency problems associated with entrenchment and expropriation in family firms. We also find that managers of family firms are less aggressive in managing earnings via discretionary long-term accruals compared to non-family firms.     

Forecasts in IPO Prospectuses: The Effect of Corporate Governance on Earnings Management

Prior research suggests that managers may use earnings management to meet voluntary earnings forecasts. We document the extent of earnings management undertaken within Canadian Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and study the extent to which companies with better corporate governance systems are less likely to use earnings management to achieve their earnings forecasts. In addition, we test other factors that differentiate forecasting from non‐forecasting firms, and assess the impact of forecasting and corporate governance on future cash flow prediction. We find that firms with better corporate governance are less likely to include a voluntary earnings forecast in their IPO prospectus. In addition, we find that while IPO firms use accruals management to meet forecasts; the informativeness of the discretionary accruals depends on whether or not the firm would have missed its forecast without the use of discretionary accruals.     

IFRS adoption,reporting incentives and financial reporting quality in private firms

This study examines financial reporting quality (FRQ) effects around voluntary International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoptions by German private firms across two important dimensions, earnings quality and disclosure practices. To capture differences in the motivations for IFRS adoptions, we identify four different types of IFRS adopting firms based on a comprehensive set of firm characteristics. We observe earnings quality improvements around IFRS adoptions primarily for one type of firm, which is young, fast growing and seeking access to public equity markets. Using a matched sample of private German GAAP and IFRS reporting firms, we find some evidence suggesting that IFRS also contribute to higher earnings quality. Recognizing that our earnings quality metrics are only incomplete measures of FRQ, we also compare the disclosure practices of IFRS and German GAAP firms. We find that all IFRS firm types disclose significantly more information in their financial reports and show a higher propensity to publish their financial reports voluntarily on the corporate website. Our findings indicate that failure to identify earnings quality changes around IFRS adoption cannot be automatically interpreted as IFRS adoption having no effect on the FRQ of (private) firms. Collectively, our results suggest that both incentives and accounting standards shape private firms’ FRQ.     

Business and financial information integration and voluntary management earnings forecasts

In this study, the impact of business and financial information integration (BFII) on the voluntary management earnings forecasts (VMEFs) of listed firms in China between 2008 and 2018 is investigated. Drawing on litigation cost and ability signaling theories, we find that the adoption of BFII encourages top managers to disclose VMEFs. BFII firms are identified through the textual analysis of management discussion and analysis (MD&A) reports, and the empirical results indicate that BFII firms have a higher probability and frequency of issuing VMEFs than non-BFII firms. The results remain robust after we identify causality by applying a propensity score matching and difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) test and use an alternate measure of BFII. Further tests show that BFII firms issue more accurate VMEFs and are able to issue them at an earlier stage. We also find that the positive relationship between BFII and VMEFs is weakened if the media expresses concern about the uncertainty of BFII adoption.     

Related party transactions and firm value: The moderating role of corporate social responsibility reporting

This study investigates the influence of related party transactions (RPTs) on firm value. Further, it examines whether a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting reflects its corporate values and ethical concerns, therefore mitigating the value-destroying effects of RPTs. Based on 274 observations from publicly listed firms in Indonesia, our results show that RPTs (i.e., related party sales) are negatively related to firm value. Further, we find that in the presence of better CSR reporting, the relationship between RPTs and firm value becomes more positive. This is in line with the view that CSR reporting, which reflects firms’ ethical concerns, may serve as a mechanism against managers’ opportunism. However, we find that related party payables have a positive relationship with firm value. Further investigation reveals that, although certain RPTs show a short-term, value-enhancing effect, these transactions seem to result in subsequent tunneling activities, suggesting managerial opportunism in the long term.     

A note on work-related values, budget emphasis and managers’ organisational commitment

Managers’ work-related values (WRVs) have important implications for designing appropriate management accounting systems (MAS) in organisations. This paper examines the effect of the interaction between managers’ WRV for innovation and budget emphasis (an integral part of MAS) on their organisational commitment. The sample consisted of 109 managers from production, marketing and support departments within Australian manufacturing firms. Hypotheses were tested using both quantitative and qualitative data collected by a questionnaire survey and post-survey interviews. The results indicate that the adoption of low budget emphasis led to high organisational commitment when managers’ WRV for innovation was high, but not when managers’ WRV for innovation was low. The results also indicate that marketing managers held higher WRV for innovation than production managers. The post-survey interviews provide further insight into how a more customer- and competitor-focused subculture of marketing managers and a more technical- and efficiency-focused subculture of production managers may promote the difference in their WRV for innovation, and affect their attitudes towards budget emphasis. The findings of the study have implications for design of performance evaluation systems for managers in functionally differentiated organisations.     

Managerial Ownership, the Method of Payment for Acquisitions, and Executive Job Retention

This study investigates how acquiring and target firm managers' preferences for control rights motivate the payment for corporate acquisitions. We expect that managers of target firms who value influence in combined firms will prefer to receive stock. One reason top managers desire influence is to enhance their chances of retaining jobs in the combined firm. Our analysis shows a strong, positive association between managerial ownership of target firms and the likelihood of acquisitions for stock. We also find that managers of target firms are more likely to retain jobs in combined firms when they receive stock rather than cash.