Firm Status Research Articles

품질경쟁력 우수기업의 장기성과

Quality management started from eliminating defective products in the manufacturing process to secure quality, and then developed into statistical quality control. Currently, this means a total quality management (TQM) system, in which all of a firm’s activities affecting quality are included. Many countries are aware that the competitiveness of their countries depends upon the quality competitiveness of enterprises. Countries around the world established similar national award since the United States has enacted the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award to improve the quality competitiveness of domestic companies. Korea also operates the national quality awards system, such as ‘National Quality Grand Award’, ‘National Quality Grand Award’ and ‘Excellent Quality Competitiveness Enterprises’. Among these awards, ‘Excellent Quality Competitiveness Enterprises (EQCE)’ has the advantage of sustainable quality improvement in that companies can conduct self-diagnoses by applying specific criteria, and companies can earn the award without duplicate restrictions. The purpose of this paper is to compare the long-run performance of the excellent quality competitiveness enterprise (EQCE) awarding companies relative to matching non-awarding companies in the Korean stock market. The contribution of this paper is as follows. Firstly, while prior studies have examined the comparison using accounting performance, this study compares economic performance. Accounting evaluation is based upon the accounting ratio, which is extracted from financial statements. Financial statements evaluate past financial status and management performance of firms. However, economic performance is based on capital market data, which is assumed to evaluate present and future performance of firms. Secondly, this paper employs stock returns as a measure of financial performance using capital market data. Moreover, current study diversifies the performance measure by using not only stock returns but also operating performance and Tobin’s Q. Thirdly, the existing studies have compared the accounting performance of the sample firms with the average accounting value of the whole manufacturing industry firms. Since a lot of empirical evidence has shown that the effect of macro-economic variables are different by industries, it is necessary to analyze the performance comparison of firms by each industry. This paper compares the performance of sample firms with those of matching firms, which are chosen according to the most similar size among which the sample firms belong. Fourthly, many previous studies have reported that investment and capital financing behaviors of companies are different by the economic expansion and contraction periods. Thus, the company performance is also likely to vary depending on the economic phases. Current study compares the financial performance of companies with matching firms by classifying the sample period according the economic phases of expansion and contraction. The samples consist of 42 EQCE awarding firms and their corresponding matching firms from 2003 to 2014. The first proxy of long-run performance is stock returns of the firm, which is commonly used in measuring firm performance. The second proxy of long-run performance is operating performance of (EBITDA/TA), where the EBITDA is the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and TA is the total assets of the firm. The third proxy of long-run performance is Tobin’s Q of (MVE+PS+DEBT)/TA, where the MVE is the market value of equity, PS is the market value of preferred stock, DEBT is the book value of debt, and TA is total assets of the firm. The two-tailed T-test results of mean difference of sample firms and comparable firms indicate that the matching firms are adequately chosen to their corresponding sample firms.

Benjamin Constant's Republican Liberalism Between Reaction and Terror

The article focuses on the general analysis of the evolution of Benjamin Constant's political views and contains an overview of its reception in the last decades. This reexamination resulted in the reevaluation of the impact of his political philosophy on European thought. For European and especially for Russian readers Constant had remained a “forgotten classic”, whose historical importance was recognized, although its influence on the political tradition of liberalism had been underestimated. On the example of his important early work “On political reactions” (1797) translated into Russian for the first time, the article analyzes the genesis of the French political liberalism as a possible “third way” between Jacobin terror and the ideology of restoration of the Old Regime. It also scrutinizes Constant's attempt to understand the relation between the political institutions and the “dominant ideas” in a given society in order to establish the firm status of the “public opinion” that is supposed to become the leading force in the democratic societies.

Earnings management in private family versus non-family firms. The moderating effect of family business generation

ABSTRACTThe study addresses the signs of earnings management in unlisted companies, comparing the situation in family firms and non-family firms. We adopt arguments from agency theory, and stewardship theory, which are supplemented with the assumptions of socio-emotional wealth literature, to justify our research model. The sample is composed of 263 audited Spanish companies with a turnover of more than 200 million euros, which were analysed in the period from 2011 to 2015. Results indicate that family firms are less prone to the practices of earnings management than non-family firms, and that the association between family firm status and earnings management is moderated by the firm generation. This work contributes to the literature on the quality of financial information in both family firms and unlisted companies, exploring new areas of research.

Board independence and information asymmetry: family firms vs non-family firms

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of independent directors in reducing firms’ information asymmetry. Moreover, the authors enrich this investigation by differentiating the effectiveness of independent directors in an intriguing comparative setting of family vs non-family firms. Family firms are used to represent an interesting environment where controlling insiders (i.e. firms’ founding families) have dominant control over corporate decisions. This study addresses the question of whether controlling-insiders dominate independent directors.Design/methodology/approachThe authors manually collect firms’ founder information to identify family firm status in a sample of S&P 500 firms. Following a large literature in capital market research, the authors proxy information asymmetry by trading volume, bid-ask spread and price volatility. The authors employ multivariate regression with two-stage least square analysis, instrumental variable method, Heckman selection model and Hausman–Taylor model to address the issue of endogenous selection of board of director and family firm status.FindingsThe authors find a negative relation between the board independence and information asymmetry, suggesting independent directors are effective in reducing information asymmetry. Furthermore, the authors find this negative relation is stronger in family firms. These results are robust after controlling for the endogenous issues using various models.Research limitations/implicationsOur results suggest that independent directors in family-controlled firms are more successful in reducing information asymmetry than their counterparts in non-family firms. The authors provide direct evidence to support the existing theoretical arguments from Rediker and Seth (1995) and Anderson and Reeb (2004) that founding families and independent boards might be a powerful combination for aligning the interest of insider and diffused shareholders. The findings ease a prevalent concern that the role of independent directors might be compromised in an environment with controlling shareholders, and advocate regulations promoting board independence for various business practices.Originality/valueA number of studies concentrate on the practice of corporate disclosure of firm’s performance and governance and how corporate disclosure mitigates information asymmetry (Leuz and Verrecchia, 2000; Ali et al., 2007; Chen et al., 2008). To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the impact of independent directors in reducing information asymmetry. The research adds to understanding the incentives of board members and supports recent findings that different types of investors have heterogeneous incentives for corporate disclosure (Srinidhi et al., 2014).

We Have Got Credit!

This paper investigates whether there is a gender bias in granting credit for businesses from Eastern Sub-Saharan Africa. It is first necessary to determine whether firms are credit-constrained. In order to identify the status of the firms with respect to credit, two recently introduced methods that can identify the credit-constrained status of firms are used. The paper uses World Bank’s Enterprise Survey Program data set from 2013 to investigate this question. The empirical results obtained, after controlling for a large number of firm-level characteristics and using country-level dummies, reveal that female-owned firms appear to have more access to credit than their male counterparts. The paper also shows that the female-owned firms in the region finance their capital according to the Pecking Order Hypothesis.

Accounting Research on Private Firms: State of the Art and Future Directions

Private companies play a significant role and are the main growth engine of the global economy. Yet, until recently, empirical research in accounting has focused primarily on public companies. Over the last few years, we have observed a change in trend. Accounting scholars have started researching private firms and have contributed to a better understanding of their accounting decisions. This growing attention is likely due to a better availability of public data and to the fact that several regulators issued specific regulations on private firms’ financial reporting. In this paper, we analyze the state of the art of accounting research in this area. We review 95 papers published in 21 accounting journals over the period 1986–2018. After looking into the definition of private firms, we highlight the role of the private firm status in the research design, classify each paper into four main research areas (i.e., financial accounting, taxation, auditing, and valuation) and discuss the main contributions. We argue that the current state of accounting research on private firms — although quite rich — is still insufficient in light of the relevance of such a segment of the world economy. After soliciting additional research, we devise possible venues for future studies.

Trading knowledge for status: Conceptualizing R&D alliance formation to achieve ambidexterity

Firms may engage in alliances to complement their learning activities through explorative or exploitative partnerships. However, the partners' status may influence the scope of alliances, in terms of explorative and exploitative learning. In fact, status, being transferable, could be exchanged to obtain peculiar resources, knowledge, and competencies by partners, thus favoring the focal firms' innovation process. Accordingly, this theoretical paper adopts an original dual perspective to understand how the status of partnering firms may affect the explorative or exploitative content of alliances. Specifically, the extant literature is analyzed to provide a theoretical discussion and infer related propositions about the content of strategic alliances between firms with the same level of status (homophilous alliances) and with different levels of status (heterophilous alliances). The inferred propositions suggest that in heterophilous alliances the high status partner explores through the specific resources of the low status partner, which in turn exploits its resources to increase its status. However, homophilous alliances of firms with high status are more dependent upon the need to reduce risks and uncertainty, therefore both partners explore or exploit. Moreover, the discussion suggests that there is no influence of status on the scope of homophilous alliances of firms with low status.

PENGARUH AUDIT FIRM STATUS, AUDIT COMPLEXITY, KEPEMILIKAN KELUARGA, DAN LOSS TERHADAP AUDIT REPORT LAG DENGAN SPESIALISASI INDUSTRI SEBAGAI VARIABEL MODERASI

The purpose of this study is to show the influence of audit firm status, auditcomplexity, family ownership, and loss with industrial specialists auditor asmoderating variable to audit report lag.The sample used in this study is based on the main sector manufactures on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) during the period 2015-2017. By using purposive sampling method obtained sample asmany as 161 companies that have been in selection and meet the criteria.Theresults of this study indicate that loss has a positive effect on audit report lag,audit firm status and audit complexity do not have positive effects on audit report lag. Then, family ownership and industry specialization do not have the negative effect on audit report lag. In addition, industry specialization do not stengthen the negative effects of audit firm status and family ownership on audit report lag. Meanwhile, industry specialization does not weaken the positive effect of audit complexity and loss on audit report lag.

A Novel Soft Ensemble Model for Financial Distress Prediction with Different Sample Sizes

This work presents a novel soft ensemble model (ANSEM) for financial distress prediction with different sample sizes. It integrates qualitative classifiers (expert system method, ES) and quantitative classifiers (convolutional neural network, CNN) based on the uni-int decision making method of soft set theory (UI). We introduce internet searches indices as new variables for financial distress prediction. By constructing a soft set representation of each classifier and then using the optimal decision on soft sets to identify the financial status of firms, ANSEM inherits advantages of ES, CNN, and UI. Empirical experiments with the real data set of Chinese listed firms demonstrate that the proposed ANSEM has superior predicting performance for financial distress on accuracy and stability with different sample sizes. Further discussions also show that internet searches indices can offer additional information to improve predicting performance.

A Research on the Innovation and Development of Micro and Small Sci-tech Enterprises

For micro and small sci-tech enterprises with insufficient resource endowment and management experience, it is of great significance to carry out innovation to improve their level of management. Based on resource-based theory and dynamic capability theory, the paper explores the influences from the angle of ecological entity, populations and communities. The internal influences include resources and capability, and the external influences include the population and development environment. Based on the above, the model of growth mechanism is suitable for technology-based small firms to show the developing process of technology-based small firms. In view of the development status of technology-based small firms, this paper researches on the growth mechanism of technology-based small firms to find the micro and macro issues for improvement. All the specific comments and suggestions can offer reference for the leaders to make decision.

Marketing and branding in family business: Assessing the landscape and charting a path forward

Prior research on family business branding has identified a range of benefits related to promoting a firm’s family status, such as increased customer trust and loyalty. Much less attention has been paid to the possible downsides of such a strategy, for example the negative associations the family firm status can create among stakeholders, like perceptions of nepotism or lack of professionalism. The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the reader to the articles featured in this special issue, which is dedicated to furthering our understanding of the facets of family business branding. Only by gaining a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon will we be able to provide meaningful guidance to the family business community.

Drivers of effort: Evidence from employee absenteeism

We use detailed information on individual absent spells of all employees in 4140 firms in Denmark to show large differences in average absenteeism across firms. Using employees who switch firms, we decompose days absent into an individual component (e.g., motivation, work ethic) and a firm component (e.g., incentives, corporate culture). We find the firm component explains 50%–60% of the difference in absenteeism across firms, with the individual component explaining the rest. We present suggestive evidence of the mechanisms behind the firm effect with family firm status and concentrated ownership strongly correlated with decreases in absenteeism. We also analyze the firm characteristics that correlate with the individual effect and find that firms with stronger career incentives attract lower-absenteeism employees.

Managerial Entrenchment and Capital Structure: The Effect of Diversification

This paper empirically examines how diversification influences the relation between corporate governance and capital structure. Consistent with the creditor alignment hypothesis, we find a positive relation between managerial entrenchment and leverage in diversified firms. In contrast, we find a negative relation between managerial entrenchment and leverage in focused firms, which supports the managerial entrenchment hypothesis. These effects are stronger or only exist in samples with low excess values, which supports the agency channel through which governance influences leverage decisions. The results are robust to different measures of leverage, diversification, and governance, and continue to hold when we correct for selection bias and account for the joint endogeneity of leverage, diversification, and governance. Our evidence shows that the conflict in the literature on the relation between leverage and managerial entrenchments is because earlier empirical studies do not condition on the diversification status of firms. Entrenched managers in focused firms eschew leverage, whereas entrenched managers in diversified firms take advantage of their better access to debt finance and use more financial leverage.

Evolution and effect of LEAN bundles: a longitudinal study

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the effects of lean in a longitudinal context. Lean is currently experiencing its second coming. In spite of this, the current body of research on lean is especially lacking in longitudinal studies.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology used in this study is a longitudinal case study. The authors combined elements of multiple-case study and survey research by analyzing interview data on the same 23 Finnish manufacturing firms at three distinct points in time (1993, 2004 and 2010) with a methodology called qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) that is novel to the field.FindingsThe “thick” results of our exploratory contingency theoretic analysis suggest that the holistic and adaptive use of lean bundles is effective. It seems that especially the firm status of ownership and the phase of the business cycle exert an impact on successful lean bundle use. There is also evidence that a certain maturation effect takes place within lean bundle use: lean is increasingly being used as a complete management philosophy.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors hope that this research encourages researchers to use more QCA in their research, especially with small samples.Originality/valueThis is a unique longitudinal study on the same 23 manufacturing firms and their development. Furthermore, this study opens new avenues for lean theory development, introduces a new methodology to the field and helps decision makers to gain a better understanding of the long-term dynamics of lean.

The effect of industry association on firm innovation in Chinese private ventures

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between industry association membership and firm innovation in Chinese private ventures. A secondary objective is to investigate potential moderating effects of firm learning practices and founder characteristics on the above relationship, and to draw out implications for policymakers and practitioners.Design/methodology/approachThe paper utilizes data from a sample of 567 Chinese entrepreneurial firms operating in 9 designated emerging industries. Hierarchical regression models were employed to analyze the effect of industry association membership on firm innovation, and the potential moderating effects. A 2SLS procedure was adopted to control for potential endogeneity issue. Supplemental analyses were conducted to ensure the robustness of the findings.FindingsThe paper provides empirical insights about how industry association membership, along with firm learning practice and founder leadership, affect firm innovation in Chinese private ventures in emerging industries. It suggests that industry association membership positively affects firm innovation. Further, there is a three-way interaction effect of industry association membership, learning practice and founder power on innovation.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the design of the data set, there are some limitations. First, the study only considered whether a firm belongs to an industry association, but not the nature of such membership (length, firm status in the association, etc.). Second, the cross-sectional design may limit the power of the study to make casual implications about the tested relationships.Practical implicationsThe paper provides important practical implications for policymakers and entrepreneurs in China. In general, the results suggest that private ventures pursuing innovation in emerging industries can benefit from industry associations, and entrepreneurs shall actively engage in firm-level and personal-level learning. For policymakers, the study suggests that to foster innovation in an emerging industry, special attention shall be paid to building necessary institutional support to develop and to strengthen the role of industry association in the industry.Originality/valueThis paper fulfills an important gap in the literature in that it is one of the first, which investigates the role of the industry association in firm innovation, especially in a non-western context. This paper provides new insights into the role of industry association and firm innovation in an under-researched developing economy context.

Determinants of liquidity in Malaysian SMEs: a quantile regression approach

PurposeThe management of liquidity has always been seen as a critical but often ignored issue in finance. Despite the abundance of studies on liquidity management, these studies mainly focus on developed countries and on large firms. Liquidity is critical for the small firm but studies on liquidity management in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are lacking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the firm-level determinants of liquidity of SMEs in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachData are collected for a total of 986 small firms in Malaysia from 2011 to 2014, resulting in a total of 2,683 observations. Firm-specific variables and the effect of the economy are considered as the possible determinants of liquidity. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis with standard errors adjusted for firm-level clustering and quantile regression analysis are used for this purpose.FindingsAnalysis using OLS regression technique indicates that a firm’s profitability, its growth, asset tangibility, size, age and firm status are significant factors in influencing its liquidity decision. Leverage and economic condition are not found to have any significant influence on liquidity. However, quantile regression analysis provides a different picture especially for SMEs with liquidity at the quantile levels ofθ=0.10 and 0.90. Atθ=0.10, only profitability, tangibility and firm status are significant, while atθ=0.90, tangibility, size, firm status and, to some extent, age are significant in influencing liquidity levels.Originality/valueTo the author’s knowledge, this is the first study analyzing the liquidity decision of SMEs in an emerging market such as Malaysia. Most studies on liquidity management of SMEs are focused on developed countries due to data availability but these studies are also only a handful. Additionally, this study uses quantile regression analysis which highlights the need to analyze financial decisions at different levels rather than at the aggregate level as done in OLS regression analysis.

Corporate Social Performance and Acquisition Performance: The Role of Target Quality

Drawing on stakeholder theory and signaling theory and considering both seller and buyer’s perspectives, we examine the relationship between acquirers’ corporate social performance (CSP) and acquisition performance, we also explore the role of target quality as a mediator as well as the roles of entrepreneurial firm status, TMT ownership, and family-controlled firms as moderators of the CSP–acquisition performance relationship. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 354 acquisitions. Our results show that acquirers’ CSP is significantly related to targets’ quality, and those relationships are enhanced when targets’ TMTs have greater ownership but not when targets are entrepreneurial firms or family-controlled firms. We find that acquirers’ CSP enhances acquisition performance through the mediating effects of targets’ quality. Our paper contributes to research on acquisition performance, CSP, and target and acquirer selection.

Perception of Firm Status and Organizational Ambidexterity

While research on antecedents of organizational ambidexterity is voluminous, very little attention has been paid to the impact that managerial cognition has on ambidexterity. In the current study, we investigate the impact of managers’ perception of own organizational status on the ambidexterity and its boundary conditions. We argue that managers perceiving high organizational status will be more risk-taking and involved in more divergent thinking, and consequently pursue more exploration. In contrast, managers perceiving low organizational status will be risk-aversive and more engaged in convergent thinking, making exploitation more likely. We further identify a set of internal and external contingencies derived from the managerial discretion perspective that might affect the effects of status perceptions. A careful analysis based on a unique two-wave survey dataset of about 500 Chinese firms generally supports our predictions. Our study contributes significantly to research on organizational ambidexterity and status.

Process and product innovations, multi-product status and export performance: firm-level evidence from V?4 countries

Research background: In this paper, we study empirically the relationship between different forms of innovations, multi-product status and export performance of firms from four Visegrad countries. We treat innovations as the key element that can increase the level of firm productivity.
 Purpose of the article: The main objective is to analyze the empirical relationship between different firms of innovation of firms from Visegrad countries and their export performance. In contrast to previous studies that use R&D spending as a measure of innovation, we rather relay on innovation outcomes. Our detailed hypotheses postulate the existence of positive relationships between firm export performance and different forms of innovation. We seek to determine which type of innovation activity is of the greatest importance for exporting and whether it depends on firm size, the level of internationalization, the use of human capital and its sector of activity. In addition, we control for the multi-product status of firms, i.e. whether they sell one or many products.
 Methods: The measures of innovative activity of companies include both spending on R&D as well as its effects, such as product and process innovations. In addition, we control for the multi-product status measured by the share of the main product in total sales of the firm, as well as for other firm-level characteristics. The empirical implementation of the theoretical framework is based on the probit models, applied to the fifth edition of BEEPS firm level data set covering the period 2011?2014.
 Findings & Value added: Our results indicate that the probability of exporting is positively related to both product and process innovations and the multi-product status. In addition, we find that the probability of exporting is related to the set of control variables including labor productivity, firm size, the share of university graduates in productive employment, foreign capital participation and the use of foreign licenses.

A Study on the Reorganization of the Department of Social Services in the Specialized Commercial High School by Investigating the Status of Social Innovation Firms in Chung-Nam

A Study on the Reorganization of the Department of Social Services in the Specialized Commercial High School by Investigating the Status of Social Innovation Firms in Chung-Nam