Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract We investigate whether credit default swap (CDS) trading results in managers learning new information through stock prices that is relevant to their investment and forecasting decisions. We argue that the CDS market structure, the sophistication of CDS market participants, and the cleanness of CDS spreads as a signal of default risk together produce and convey information that is new to managers of firms referenced in CDS contracts. We consider two measures for managerial learning: (1) the sensitivity of managerial investments to share prices and (2) the sensitivity of changes in management forecast accuracy to stock returns. We find that both sensitivity measures increase significantly when firms are referenced in any traded CDS contracts, indicating that CDS trading improves managerial learning. We also find that the improvement in managerial learning is more pronounced for firms that are subject to higher uncertainty in industry‐specific and economy‐wide prospects, consistent with the view that CDS market participants have informational advantages with respect to the industry‐level and macroeconomic environments. We further find that the improvement in managerial learning is more evident for firms with higher credit risk. Our findings provide large‐sample evidence on a positive consequence of CDS trading in the context of managers' ability to learn from outside investors.

Contemporary Accounting ResearchVolume 40, Issue 1 p. E1-E11 LIST OF REVIEWERS CAR Ad Hoc Reviewers 2022/RCC Réviseurs ad hoc 2022 First published: 16 March 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12854Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume40, Issue1Spring 2023Pages E1-E11 RelatedInformation

We examine how metric intensity—that is, the quantity, frequency, and extent to which performance metrics are tracked and used—varies with a firm's dependency on innovation for business success. Although performance metrics are essential in an organization's management control system, little is known about how the use of metrics differs in organizations with varying dependencies on incremental and radical innovation. Drawing on data from a sample of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), we hypothesize and find that firms' dependency on incremental (radical) innovation is positively (negatively) associated with metric intensity. Furthermore, we find that (1) the positive relationship between the dependency on incremental innovation and metric intensity is stronger when the organizational culture is focused more on “control” and (2) the negative relationship between the dependency on radical innovation and metric intensity is mitigated when the organizational culture is focused more on “flexibility.” Additional analysis shows that the positive (negative) relationship between incremental (radical) innovation dependency and metric intensity can be mitigated by greater use of metrics for decision‐facilitating purposes. Our findings suggest that metrics‐based formal controls are designed to match the types of innovation dependencies and pre‐existing informal controls such as organizational culture. This study highlights the importance of distinguishing different types of innovation dependency in studying management control systems.

Every analyst will experience stock recommendation failures during their career. Unlike many other professions, these pivotal moments occur in the full glare of clients, colleagues, equity‐sales teams, and the media. This research explores the practices of analysts up to and beyond the point where, faced with a failing recommendation, they contemplate “throwing in the towel” on their recommendation. Based on empirical evidence gathered from interviews with sell‐side analysts and their key interlocutors—equity‐sales specialists, investors, and investor relations officers—this paper uncovers several new empirical insights into the recommendation practices of analysts. The main argument made in the paper is that capitulation practices emerge from the specific contextual framework of individual recommendations and the analyst's conduct as a knowledgeable, emotional human agent. We identify several contextual contingencies of stock recommendations that underpin how a capitulation episode unfolds, including the temporal proximity of the capitulation to the original recommendation; the importance and profile of the stock to the analyst's reputation (“franchise intensity”); the level of interest/reaction from clients, equity‐sales teams and corporates; the nature/cause of recommendation failure; and recommendation boldness. Our study provides evidence that what an analyst does when faced with a failing recommendation cannot be reduced to a predictable, rational process and informs our understanding of observed practices such as the reluctance of analysts to capitulate and why “recommendation paralysis” often follows a recommendation capitulation.

Customer referencing is a strategy that firms can use to disclose their connections with reputable customers as a means of enhancing their own reputations. We study the capital market benefits of naming reputable nonmajor customers in firms' financial reports to provide empirical evidence on whether this form of customer referencing has important practical implications. We predict and find that firms enjoy a lower cost of equity when they engage in customer referencing in their financial reports, consistent with the argument that this form of voluntary disclosure increases investor attention and customer certification. In cross‐sectional analyses, we predict and find that the benefits of customer referencing are more pronounced for firms that (1) lack major customers or reputable major customers, (2) name customers whose reputations exceed their own, and (3) face higher competition. Overall, our study provides evidence that communicating certain interorganizational connections can generate capital market benefits for disclosing firms.

ABSTRACT Clinical labs belong to a mature industry and fulfill a critical function in the health‐care value chain. We examine factors that influence the opportunity, motivation, and ability to learn in clinical labs. We hypothesize that with respect to learning about cost: (i) organizational design, such as the extent of outsourcing can impede the opportunity to learn, (ii) quality focus (measured by mortality rates and length of stay (LOS)) can reduce the motivation to learn, and (iii) related task variety (measured by product‐mix breadth) and information technology investments can enhance the ability to learn. Our empirical tests calibrate learning effects on disaggregate (technical and supervisory hours and cost) and aggregate (salary and total direct cost) cost and time pools. Using longitudinal data from clinical labs in California for the period 1997–2015, we find that clinical labs with greater cumulative output have lower average costs, consistent with learning effects in clinical labs. We also find results consistent with our hypotheses about the contextual factors that influence learning rates in clinical labs. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of learning rates with implications for budgeting, forecasting, and performance measurement. The results highlight that learning can be a crucial source of cost reduction in health‐care settings.

Motivated by prior literature on organizational identification and 23 semistructured interviews with a variety of US audit partners and directors, we examine whether the gender and ethnic diversity of an office's audit partners influences the retention of the office's audit professionals and the quality of the audits conducted by the office. Using hand‐collected data on US audit partners, we find that greater levels of (or changes in) diversity in office audit partners' gender and ethnicity are associated with lower (reduced) turnover among office audit professionals and higher (increased) office‐level audit quality. We conduct a path analysis based on the most common mechanisms highlighted in our interviews to provide further insight into the audit quality results. The results indicate partial mediation through increased retention, greater gender and ethnic diversity among office audit personnel, client continuity, and increased efficiency. Further tests reveal that the association with audit quality is incremental to, and distinct from, the effect of individual engagement partner characteristics and does not reflect client screening. The findings underscore the importance of gender and ethnic diversity among office audit partners to organizational outcomes and provide important practical implications for audit firms.

ABSTRACT Investors frequently rely on individual analysts' stock price targets. Aggressive price targets often reflect analysts' attempts to strategically influence investors. Therefore, investors' welfare may be compromised if they take aggressive price targets at face value. In this study, we examine conditions under which investors are more likely to infer that analysts who issue aggressive price targets are acting strategically. Investors can evaluate multiple analysts' price targets with or without other related information (e.g., earnings estimates). Investors can also evaluate the information provided by multiple analysts jointly or separately one analyst at a time. Two experiments find that as predicted, when investors evaluate multiple analysts' price targets without earnings estimates, there is no difference in investors' perceptions about whether the aggressive analyst is acting strategically across joint versus separate evaluation. However, also as predicted, when investors evaluate multiple analysts' price targets along with their earnings estimates, investors perceive the aggressive analyst as acting more strategically under joint evaluation than under separate evaluation. Our findings suggest that jointly evaluating multiple analysts' price targets with other related information, such as earnings estimates, can reduce the likelihood that investors would be overly influenced by aggressive analysts.

This study investigates the financial and operational implications of enterprise systems (ESs) in corporate risk management. Using matched difference‐in‐differences analyses based on ES implementation events, we document a significant reduction in the volatility of operating cash flows following ES implementations. We further show that ES implementers have better post‐implementation operational efficiency than matched non‐ES firms and better manage sales, costs of sales, working capital, and operating expenses to reduce operating cash flow volatility. Consistent with the benefits of lower cash flow volatility documented in prior literature, we find ES implementers demonstrate higher investment efficiency, lower reliance on external financing, and higher debt capacity post‐ES‐implementation than the matched non‐ES firms. Our study sheds light on the economic benefits of utilizing ESs in corporate risk management and in so doing responds to the paucity of empirical research in this area.

The stated goal of the SEC Whistleblower Program introduced as part of the Dodd‐Frank Act was to deter securities violations and thereby to strengthen investor protection. We document significant reductions in the likelihood of financial reporting fraud by US firms following the introduction of this program. The reductions are robust to controlling for other regulatory changes in the Dodd‐Frank Act and economic trends. Given that employees of firms with weaker internal compliance and reporting programs are more likely to report irregularities directly to the SEC rather than internally, we predict and find that these firms are more likely to change their reporting behavior. We also show that the observed reductions are attributable to an improvement in internal whistleblower programs and the hiring of more capable audit committee members after the program's inception. Collectively, these findings provide important large‐sample evidence of significant benefits of the SEC Whistleblower Program for deterring financial reporting fraud and of the efficacy of bounty‐type whistleblower programs.