Earnings management as a predictor of future profitability of Finnish firms

This study investigates whether the level of current earnings management can be used to predict future profitability of Finnish firms. Earnings management is assumed to predict future profitability, because firms use discretional accruals to manage this year's earnings upwards/downwards, if they believe that the next year's earnings will be high/low. Finnish data are used because the extent of the earnings management can be directly measured from the published Finnish financial statements. The results indicate that the lagged earnings management is significantly related to the future profitability of a firm. The lagged earnings management also contains incremental information relative to past profitability or stock prices when predicting future profitability.     

The virtuous circle of human resource investments: A precrisis and postcrisis analysis

We propose a dynamic model of positive feedback between human resource (HR) investments and companies' economic performance. The model assumes that HR investment increases profitability through labor productivity and, in turn, profitability improves HR investment through organizational slack. Based on data from a sample of 2,497 industrial companies over a 7‐year period (2005–2011), longitudinal analysis corroborates the existence of a two‐way relationship between HR investment and profitability over time. However, the emergence of an economic crisis weakens this feedback, identifying the effect of organizational slack on HR investment as the weakest causal chain link. In a postcrisis period, HR investment is not such a high priority for managers.     

Career Concerns and Product Market Competition

This paper studies the effect of increased competition in the product market on managerial incentives. I propose a simple model of career concerns where firms are willing to pay for managerial talent to reduce production costs, but also to subtract talented executives from competitors. This second effect is privately valuable to firms, but is socially wasteful. As a result, equilibrium pay for talent can be inefficiently high and career concerns too strong. Explicit incentive contracts do not solve the problem, but equilibrium pay is reduced if managerial skills have firm‐specific components, or if firms are heterogeneous. In this second case, managers are efficiently assigned to firms, but equilibrium pay reflects the profitability of talent outside the efficient allocation. The effect of increased competition is ambiguous in general, and depends on the profit sensitivity to cost reductions. This ambiguity is illustrated in two examples of commonly used models of imperfect competition.     

The impact of ISO 14001 on firm environmental and economic performance: The moderating role of size and environmental awareness

This paper analyzes the impact of adopting the ISO 14001 standard on firm environmental and economic performance. In particular, it is argued that the degree of environmental awareness of the society (EAS) and firm size are two factors moderating the effect of ISO 14001 on firm performance. A number of hypotheses are formulated and empirically tested on an international sample of 583 listed companies in 46 countries over the period of 2009–2018. The findings show that (i) ISO 14001 adoption contributes to reducing firm carbon emission intensity and increasing firm profitability; (ii) the impact of ISO14001 on profitability is greater for companies from countries with high EAS and for larger firms; and (iii) the impact of ISO 14001 on carbon intensity is greater for headquartered in countries with low EAS. Managerial and policy implications resulting from the widespread adoption of certifiable environmental standards are also discussed.     

CEO强制变更与公司业绩的相关性研究 ——基于国有上市公司数据

以2000年至2012年沪深两地A股国有上市公司为研究样本,探讨在国有上市公司存在多重目标的情况下公司业绩与CEO强制变更之间的相关性,实证结果表明:当国有上市公司处于亏损状态时,公司业绩和CEO强制变更之间显著负相关;对于经营状况良好的国有上市公司来说,公司业绩和CEO强制变更之间不存在显著的相关关系。进一步研究发现,CEO强制变更后,亏损公司的业绩会得到显著性改善,而盈利公司的业绩则没有显著变化。     

Does Ownership Matter? Evidence from the Zaibatsu Dissolution Program

In 1985, Demsetz and Lehn argued both that the optimal corporate ownership structure was firm-specific, and that market competition would drive firms toward that optimum. Because ownership was endogenous to expected performance, any regression of profitability on ownership patterns would yield insignificant results. To test this hypothesis, we use the zaibatsu dissolution program from late-1940s Japan as a natural experiment: an exogenous shock to the equilibrium ownership structure. Through that program, the US-run occupation removed the more prominent shareholders from many of the most successful Japanese companies. By focusing on the way firms and investors responded to the mandated selloff, we accomplish two goals: (a) we avoid the endogeneity problem that has plagued much of the other research on the subject, and (b) we clarify the equilibrating dynamics by which competitive markets move firms toward their optimal ownership structure. With a sample of 637 Japanese firms for 1953 and 710 for 1958, we confirm the equilibrating mechanism behind the Demsetz-Lehn hypothesis: between 1953 and 1958, the ex-zaibatsu firms did retructure their ownership patterns. As of 1953, the unlisted ex-zaibatsu and new firms still had not been able to negotiate the transactions necessary to approach their profit-maximizing ownership structures. Even the listed firms had not fully undone the effect of the occupation-induced changes on managerial practices. By 1958 the firms had done this, and the earlier correlation between profitability and ownership disappeared. By then, firm profitability showed no correlation with ownership, whether under linear, quadratic, or piecewise specifications. We further find no evidence that ex-zaibatsu firms sought to strengthen their ties to banks over 1953–1958.     

The impact of market and industry risk on family succession

This study investigates the succession decision of family firms in connection with the risk environment faced by the firm. Succession itself can rightly be considered a risk event due to managerial uncertainty. This uncertainty coupled with a high risk operating environment magnifies the critical importance of making a correct succession decision. In this paper, the primary focus is on how market and industry risk influence the selection of either a family member or a family external professional as the successor, and how this decision impacts post-succession firm performance. Our sample is comprised of 383 succession events in Taiwanese listed companies over a twenty-year period (1997–2016). Using industrial profitability risk and systematic risk as the risk measures, we find that firms operating in a high-risk environment tend to employ a non-family member as the successor which on average leads to superior post-succession performance compared to firms that choose a family member as the successor. This result particularly holds when the non-family successor is able to successfully reduce firm-level risk. Overall, our results demonstrate that the risk condition of a firm is an important determinant of the succession decision of family firms, and that a non-family successor is more competent in managing a high-risk operating environment.     

Managerial Agency Costs of Socialistic Internal Capital Markets: Empirical Evidence from China

This study provides empirical evidence of managerial agency costs in socialistic internal capital markets. Listed Chinese companies are required to disclose the amount of resources that are reallocated to other firms of the parent company, which provides us with a direct measure of the socialistic subsidization of weak member firms by strong member firms within a business group. We hypothesize that in strong member firms, managerial compensation is less sensitive to firm performance because cross‐subsidization makes it difficult for group CEOs to hold the managers in strong firms accountable for their own firms' performance, and also increases the noise in performance measures. We also hypothesize that socialistic cross‐subsidization results in an increase in managerial agency costs of strong member firms due to the low pay‐performance sensitivity and low incentive to work hard. We document empirical results that are consistent with these two predictions.     

Corporate social responsibility and sustainability reporting on the Internet

All material related to environmental and social performance on the corporate internet sites of 454 Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 1000 companies in 25 industrial sectors was analyzed using the Pacific Sustainability Index. Maximum scores for individual sectors were 20–75 percent of the total possible, highest in the largest and most environmentally sensitive sectors and ranging generally linearly, as shown by plotting score versus rank, down to nearly zero in every sector. None of the variation in score is explained by corporate revenue in the Asian and European firms in this sample (revenues greater than about $9 billion), but there is a very weak correlation between score and revenue for American firms of this size, and a stronger one when Fortune 1000 companies (all American) with revenues smaller than this are included, suggesting that, as corporate size reaches a certain threshold, sustainability reporting becomes independent of it. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Measuring the performance of Internet companies using a two-stage data envelopment analysis model

In exploring the business operation of Internet companies, few researchers have used data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate their performance. Since the Internet companies have a two-stage production process: marketability and profitability, this study employs a relational two-stage DEA model to assess the efficiency of the 40 dot com firms. The results show that our model performs better in measuring efficiency, and is able to discriminate the causes of inefficiency, thus helping business management to be more effective through providing more guidance to business performance improvement.     

Does divestment matter for firm performance?: Evidence from the Indian experience

We employ data on federal government-owned public enterprises since the 1980s that encompass the partial privatization program to examine its impact on a gamut of performance measures. The analysis indicates that fully government-owned firms are significantly less profitable than partially privatized ones. The evidence also indicates that while the improvements in profitability largely occur during the one to three years just before privatization, the progress in terms of leverage and employment are typically spread out over a much longer period. Finally, the results indicate that the auction method of privatization maximizes government revenues, after controlling for the state of economic activity and other macroeconomic factors.     

企业年报阅读难易程度的衡量与影响因素研究——基于管理者操纵视角

以我国2007—2017年上市企业年报文本信息为研究对象,基于委托代理背景下的印象管理理论,从驱动、约束、风格三个维度分析易读性运用的影响因素。研究结果表明:企业绩效与易读性水平显著正相关,是易读性操纵的驱动因素;民营企业的盈利水平会显著驱动高管对易读性水平的操纵,而从长期公司价值的角度来看,不同所有制公司之间操纵的动机无显著差别;公司治理水平对管理者操纵年报易读性的抑制作用较为有限,监事会规模能发挥有效作用;保持高管团队的多样性和专业程度、提高女性高管占比、高管团队年轻化、提高受教育程度,均在提升年报易读性水平方面能够起到积极作用。     

THE REMUNERATION OF NON-OWNER MANAGERS IN SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED UK ENTERPRISES

Virtually all prior research on small and medium sized enterprise (SME) management has focused on owner managers. This article, however, empirically examines the determinants of managerial remuneration for a sample of 97 UK SME non-owning managerial employees. the empirical analysis, based upon data obtained from interviews with middle (i.e. non-director level) managers and the published financial records of their employing firms lodged at Companies House, first examines the influence of firm size and performance and then augments the empirical model to include pay composition, industrial sector, external labour market and human capital variables. The empirical results indicate that the average profitability of the employing firms is not a significant determinant of managerial remuneration. However, composition of pay appears to have a significant effect upon total remuneration since, even after controlling for other influences, managers in receipt of annual bonuses and/or profit-sharing bonuses are estimated to earn an additional £6,600. the managers’age and qualifications, and the asset size, industry and location of their employing firms are also significant factors and collectively are able to explain a large proportion of the cross-sectional variance in remuneration. Though there is a lack of previous empirical research on SME managerial pay.     

Alternative measures of rates of return: Some empirical evidence

Firm profitability is measured in most cases by an accounting rather than by the theoretically superior economic (or internal) rate of return. This paper explores the relationship between accounting and internal rates of return using COMPUSTAT data for 1013 large industrial firms over a 20-year period. The research was motivated by the controversy ongoing between scholars concerning the validity of the accounting rate of return as a proxy for economic profit. The method used in this paper is different from previous research in that cash flow profiles are estimated instead of being assumed. The results, while generally supporting the contention that accounting rates of return are poor proxies for underlying economic rates of return, also provide evidence that the distortions are not so great as to render them useless for performance measurement and managerial decision-making purposes.     

Returns to corporate diversification in the 1970s

This research analyzes the performance of large corporations during the business cycles of the 1970s. The analysis identifies the level of diversification preferred by a risk-averse investor at different stages of the business cycle. The data base is a group of 222 large industrial corporations for which the number of four-digit SIC production areas has been determined for each firm. The analytical method used is that of second-degree stochastic dominance, a method that is sensitive not only to mean differences in corporate performance but also to the skewness of profitability distributions. The findings indicate that risk-averters would prefer the ten-year performance of moderately diversified firms to the performance of firms with low levels of diversification. In addition, moderately diversified firms were preferred to highly diversified firms. Finally, the experience of the 1970s suggest that there are serious managerial diseconomies of diversification in recessions.     

Information disclosure ratings and managerial short-termism: An empirical investigation of the Chinese stock market

Information asymmetry between managers and outside investors creates agency problems and impedes efficient capital allocation. Information disclosure is critical in alleviating information asymmetry in capital markets. This study investigates the effect of information asymmetry on managerial short-termism by examining information disclosure ratings (IDRs). Using real earnings management as a proxy for managerial short-termism, our analysis of a sample of Chinese A-share companies during 2001–2018 indicates that high IDRs mitigate managerial short-termism. The results also indicate that the effect of IDRs in reducing managerial short-termism is driven mainly by stock liquidity. This conclusion holds after consideration of endogeneity and application of two-stage least-squares and generalized method of moments methods, adjustment of the definition of IDRs, consideration of alternative proxies for managerial short-termism, and control for firm characteristics that might affect the extent of managerial short-termism. This study also examines the effects within three subsamples: companies listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange main board, small and medium enterprise board, and growth enterprise market board. IDRs substantially reduce managerial short-termism among firms listed on all three boards. These findings indicate that enterprises have corrected previous internal governance problems, and IDRs have helped to improve internal governance through stock liquidity. Therefore, external supervision also helps to reduce the agency problem of managerial short-termism.

     

Firm leverage decisions: Does industry matter?

We use a standard capital structure mode l to investigate the firm leverage decisions of 1620 companies listed in the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) across a span of 13 years (2000–2012), dividing the sample into mining and other industries (non-mining). We also test for significant differences in leverage decisions between these two groups by applying a dummy variable approach. Our findings show that fundamental differences exist between mining and non-mining companies when making leverage decisions. We find evidence that mining firms are more sensitive to profitability and asset tangibility where neither profitability nor asset tangibility has significant association for non-mining firms. Overall results suggest that industry-type does matter for firms making leverage decisions.     

Financial Consequences in Foreign Subsidiary Manager Performance Evaluations

ABSTRACT

This explorative study contributes to the limited body of knowledge on the financial impacts of using multiple forms of controls in managerial performance evaluations. The study explores (1) how short-term profitability is affected by headquarters' emphasis on financial, nonfinancial and selected behavioral controls in the performance evaluation of overseas subsidiary managers, and (2) whether the effects of such evaluations vary with perceived environmental changes. Documentary and survey data for a sample of multinational companies headquartered in Finland propose that the emphasis of financial controls by top management improves short-term profitability more than an emphasis on nonfinancial or behavioral controls. Simultaneous emphasis of all three types of controls does not significantly increase short-term profitability over an emphasis on financial controls, because the positive effect of behavioral controls is mostly offset by a negative effect of nonfinancial controls. Perceived environmental changes appear to moderate the relationship between the headquarters' emphasis on nonfinancial controls and short-term profitability. These findings imply that in the short-term and regardless of the environmental contingencies analyzed, financial controls are more effective than nonfinancial or behavioral controls in improving profitability, but packages comprising financial and behavioral (action accountability) controls in particular can improve short-term profitability even more.     

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURING: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIPS AND DIMENSIONS OF STRUCTURES IN CERTAIN FINNISH COMPANIES

The relationships of structure and structural factors at a general level are examined on the basis of data from a Finnish sample of mostly small and medium-sized industrial organizations. the sample, which consists of shoe and clothing firms, is homogeneous in terms of basic technology and industrial environment. the structural relationships are analysed from the point of view of size so that the interaction or concurrence of size and specialization is seen as a primary determinant of the systems of structural relationships. Some additional contextual variables are included in the analysis. Further, the factors or dimensions of structure reported are built on the basic variables of coordination and control. the factors are managerial supervision, the administrative component in general, including the clerical component, which is of particular importance, and impersonal mechanisms.     

The evolution and determinants of Chinese property insurance companies’ profitability: A DEA-based perspective

The property insurance industry grows fast in China and it is necessary to further investigate the profitability of the Chinese property insurance industry. This study investigates the evolution and determinants of the profitability of 53 Chinese property insurers during the year 2013–2017. Profitability is measured by profit ratio efficiency by data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology and a profit ratio change index is applied to compare the performance of these insurers over different periods. Tobit regression models are used to investigate several influencing factors of profitability. The empirical results show the importance of proper arrangement of costs and revenues for an insurer and help to better understand the effect of firm size, age, and product specification on profitability. Some policy implications and suggestions are also proposed.