This dissertation includes two related chapters that analyze financial condition of firms. In the first chapter, I examine the relationship between the firms' level of cash holdings and governance. The findings show that higher levels of cash holdings are significantly related to strong governance. The results also show that firms with strong governance hold asymmetrically higher levels of cash than firms with weak governance when they have high growth opportunities. Furthermore, I also test the impact of financial constraint status of the firm on the level of cash holdings for both good and poorly governed firms separately. The results suggest that strong governance firms hold higher levels of cash to use as financial slack in order to avoid financial distress. In the second essay I examine if a firm's success in leaving distress is explained by firm characteristics and manager decisions. I proxy the managers' decisions by measuring changes in operating, investing, and financing choice variables. Timely decisions with regard to product refinement, proxied by increased investment in research and development and reduction in capital expenditures, increase the probability of successful turnaround. Further the results show that increased financing through additional sale of equity, acquisitions and sale of assets do not help a firm exit financial distress.

The creation of excessive budgetary slack can be costly, causing organizations to implement internal controls to motivate employees to report more honestly. Internal control research explores many control-related motivations; however, the behavioral effects of autonomy in expanded organizational hierarchies are not well understood in budgeting contexts. This paper examines managerial autonomy and firms’ rationales for the implementation of internal controls in a setting that extends the common participatory dyad utilized in prior literature to an organizational hierarchy that includes owners, mid-level managers, and employees. This setting is explored through the lens of self-determination theory and psychological reactance theory, which offer complementary yet opposite conceptualizations of autonomy. This paper posits that owner restrictions on mid-level manager autonomy can spillover and indirectly influence budgeting decisions. Additionally, the potential for this spillover to influence the relationship between a firm’s rationale for the implementation of internal controls and subsequent budgetary decisions is examined. Findings indicate that the autonomy of mid-level managers has a spillover effect that influences manager’s rejection rates between rounds, but not across rounds and does not interact with a firm’s control implementation rationale.

Les travaux effectués à ce jour, témoignent de toute la complexité de la dynamique sous-jacente à la création de slack budgétaire. Les résultats divergents, complémentaires et parfois même contradictoires des différentes recherches sur ses déterminants témoignent de l‟existence d‟un réseau d‟influences impliquant à la fois des facteurs personnels organisationnels et contextuels. Ce phénomène peut être considéré comme une forme de déviance. Ses conséquences sont ambivalentes, il est source de dysfonctionnement et le moteur de l‟innovation et du progrès constant. Selon cette perspective le rôle du contrôle est de le piloter. A partir d‟une observation participante au niveau du contrôle de gestion d‟une société de distribution, nous nous sommes interrogés sur les moyens de maîtrise du slack budgétaire. En prenant comme cadre d‟analyse les théories de la déviance et de la criminologie, nous étudions le phénomène de création de slack budgétaire selon quatre axes d‟analyse : la norme de slack, la transgression, la détection et la sanction. Cette thèse à pour objectif de comprendre de quelle manière le slack budgétaire est maîtrisé à travers l‟étude longitudinale d‟un cas. Elle développe une approche multidisciplinaire en utilisant les apports théoriques et méthodologiques des sciences humaines.

Over the last few years there has been a downturn in business. As a response, many companies have initiated various downsizing activities – often on a short-term financial basis – in order to improve the competitive position of the company. Yet, at the same time, innovation is often cited as the key to long-term success by the very same companies. The central problem examined in this book is whether downsizing and innovation are compatible. The problem was studied during a two year exploratory case research in six cases – selected from a well-defined reference population consisting of 37 companies – facing the exact challenge of simultaneously downsizing and trying to sustain its high level of innovation. The simple answer found in the study is yes. Companies can simultaneously downsize and still maintain a high level of innovation, but it is difficult and challenging and it depends on the company’s ability to handle the knowledge creation process. So what is needed? Create an understanding in the company, at all levels, that balancing knowledge creation – the ability to share and transfer knowledge – is one of the most important tasks in order to remain innovative over time. This is done by building a commitment to knowledge creation. This commitment is achieved through making knowledge creation a visible and central element of the strategic intent, and organizing the company so that ideas can be generated and generalized. Examples of activities include: At an organizational level there is a need to create boundary spanning activities to facilitate knowledge creation between various part of the organization, but also to other organizations. At a top management level shared visions and values need to be created; exemplified in words and action. Important is that the top management not get involved into micro-management. Avoid cutting-down on initial activities – where visualization and brainstorming are in focus – in projects aiming for innovation, as these activities are the foundations the rest of the project. This book is useful for those who are faced with the challenge of finding a balance between short-term activities, often focusing on downsizing, and the more long-term activity of being innovative. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2004

The budget system is one of the important tools in the management accounting control system. However, in the budget goal setting process, budgeting managers may insert slack into their budgets. Budget slack will erode the effectiveness of the budget system. Agency researchers recognize that well-designed contracts can be used to solve this incentive problem. Therefore, truth-inducing schemes are widely discussed and analyzed. However, many empirical studies report that such schemes can decrease, but not eliminate slack completely. In the meanwhile, they can not increase performance. This study points out that the parameters of the schemes are not well-designed, therefore, the effectiveness to induce subordinates to disclose private information and increase performance is of failure. This paper analyses the relationship among parameters of the truth-inducing pay scheme, risk preference and budget slack by Minimax law under uncertainty, and points that this scheme will lose its effectiveness under some condition. At the meanwhile, this thesis also explains how to design a compensation contract to provide a reference for practical application.

Two significant differences were found between theoretical expectation and empirical results to budgetary slack in managerial accounting study. First, subjects under the slack-inducing pay schemes set their budgets well above zero regardless of their risk-neutral or risk-averse characteristics, although their maximum rewards arise from setting their budgets at zero (Waller, 1988; Chow, Cooper, and Waller, 1988; Chow, Cooper, and Haddad, 1991). Second, theoretically subjects operating under truth-inducing pay schemes set budgets at their best estimate performance, that is, no budgetary slack. But in violation of traditional economic theory, truth-inducing pay schemes have not been found to drive all slack out of the budget (Chow, Cooper, and Haddad, 1991). These results suggest that the existence of other non-pecuniary factors impacting slack, such as personal integrity and conscience, or social pressure (Chow, Cooper, and Waller, 1988). Moreover, the other potential causes in methodology may affect the congruence with theoretical expectation: (1) single-period experimental setting may limit the subjects¡¦ learning effect (Chow, Cooper, and Haddad, 1991), or (2) social pressure that was not controlled between subjects results in measurement errors. This study investigates the impacts of pay scheme, social pressure, internal norm and organizational commitment on budgetary slack in the participative budgeting setting. Specifically, this research executes an experimental test of the effects of a truth-inducing pay scheme, superior-generated social pressure, and subordinates¡¦ intern norm and their organizational commitment on the propensity to set their budgets below expected performance. In the experimental setting budgets were participatively set under three kinds of pay scheme and under the condition of either existence of social pressure or no social pressure. Pay schemes are categorized by three factors: truth-inducing pay scheme, fixed-pay-plus-bonus pay scheme, and fixed-pay-plus-bonus pay scheme with ratchet. The social pressure manipulation involved having subordinates either personally submit their budgets and performance to a superior, or enter their budgets into a computer with no personal interaction. Moreover, internal norm and organizational commitment are measured by questionnaires built in the personal computer. The experiment was conducted by computerizing the multi-period task on the screen of man-machine interactive personal computer. To eliminate the potential social pressure, subjects in the group with no social pressure executed the computerized procedure to create a ¡¨doubled-blinded¡¨ environment where there was inter-participant anonymity (anonymity between subjects) and experimenter-participant anonymity (anonymity between experimenter and subjects), hence the effects of internal norm and organizational commitment on budgetary slack were investigated. This study tested the following hypotheses with 120 production unit managers that sampled from one manufacturing company in Kaohsiung. (1) Managers will build the least slack into their budget under a truth-inducing pay scheme, the second slack under a fixed-pay-plus-bonus pay scheme with ratchet, and the most slack under a fixed-pay-plus-bonus pay scheme. (2) Managers will build less slack into their budget as social pressure from superior is increased. (3) The difference in budgetary slack between the truth-inducing pay scheme and fixed-pay-plus-bonus pay scheme with ratchet will be reduced as social pressure from superior is increased. That is, there is an interaction between pay scheme and social pressure. (4) The level of slack built into the budget will be negatively correlated with the managers¡¦ degree of internal norm in condition of no social pressure. (5) The level of slack built into the budget will be negatively correlated with the managers¡¦ degree of organizational commitment in condition of no social pressure. The test result verified the mentioned-above hypotheses except item (1) that is partially supported. This study not only extends the management accounting literature that investigates the effects of pay schemes, but also further examines the potential effects of social pressure from superior, subordinates¡¦ internal norm and organizational commitment on budgetary slack. Especially, the results that isolated the effects of internal norm from social pressure on budgetary slack have shown the implications of personnel recruitment and managerial style in the enterprises organization.

The dysfunctional consequences of budgetary controls have received a great deal of attention. One motivation for the current study was to test whether effects exist between two alleged dysfunctional consequences of a rigid budgetary control form: budget slack creation and managerial short-term orientation. According to the research: A rigid budgetary control will reduce budget slack creation and increase managerial short-term orientation. Reducing one form of dysfunctional behavior (slack creation) through rigid controls seems to raise another form (stronger management focus on business matters that affect short-term results). However, the budgetary control forms that organizations implement may be affected by two important antecedents: past business unit performance and environmental uncertainty. The results indicate that business units that have been more profitable are subject to more rigid budgetary controls, which reduce the propensity to build slack and, as a result, lead indirectly to managers¡¦ emphasis on short-term effects. The high environmental uncertainty of the business units is subject to less rigid budgetary controls from upper management allowing them to build slack, which seems in line with the flexibility required to respond effectively to changes in their environment as well as the tendency for managers to think about long-term effects. We collected 138 samples from 1,017 respondents, who are business unit managers of public owned companies in Taiwan, and used path analysis to test our hypotheses.

Google merged Youtube, Microsoft wants to merge Yahoo to compete. ACER declared in October 2007 that it merged the fourth largest computer manufacturer in US: Gateway. Above are the representatives of big merger and acquisition cases. Enterprises grow up through M&A is a trend recently, but are all the M&A cases bringing positive performances? The answer is negative. We can prove that through the cases of BENQ-Siemens and Acer-Counter Point which all ends in failure. Therefore this research reviewed related literatures and focused on the cases that serve Taiwan enterprises as the merger & acquirer between 1997 and 2006. In order to examine whether M&A experiences, types and acquirer¡¦s slack will affect M&A performance or not and to find out whether the factors affecting Taiwan enterprises to conduct M&A are the same with overseas firms or not. This research used multiple-regression model which have five independent variables ¡V M&A times, types, debt ratio, FCF ratio and sale scale. On the other hand, this research utilized 3 dependent variables to compare different point of view on performance, they are unit employee output value, return of total assets and income after taxes. The results show that the hypothesis that M&A experiences and types will have significant impact on M&A performance is rejected. On acquirer¡¦s slack, only sale scope has significant impact on M&A performance. When serving ROA as dependent variable, FCF ratio has significant impact, while others possess insignificant loadings. These results told us that the factors of M&A behaviors in Taiwan are different from overseas firms.

For decades, two key characteristics in budgeting system-budgetary participation and budgetary emphasis have been intensively discussed in previous management accounting studies. Although previous literature suggested that budgetary participation and budgetary emphasis have positive effects on mangers¡¦ effectiveness, they provided inconsistent and piecemeal evidence. This study attempts to investigate the influences of budgetary participation and emphasis on managerial effectiveness and on slack and to propose a comprehensive model in order to clarify the relationships of intervening variables among budgetary participation and emphasis on managerial effectiveness and slack. This study employs social-cognitive theory (SCT) (Bandura, 1977) and affective events theory (AET) (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) to investigate the relationships between budgetary participation, budgetary emphasis, managerial effectiveness and budgetary slack. According to social cognitive theory, this study suggests that budgetary participation and emphasis enhance managers¡¦ self-efficacy, and then improves managerial performance and job satisfaction. According to AET, this study suggests that budgetary participation implies positive affective events which effectively influence managers¡¦ attitudes-trust in superior and organizational commitment, in turn improve their performance and satisfaction. However, budgetary emphasis is implied as a negative affective event, which may influence managers¡¦ attitudes. In other words, self-efficacy, trust in superior and organizational commitment play critical intervening roles among the relationships budgetary participation, budgetary emphasis, managerial performance, job satisfaction and budgetary slack. In addition, the relationships between the intervening variables and between outcome variables are also explored. Finally, this study proposes a comprehensive budgetary participation¡¦s ¡¥cognitive-attitude-effectiveness¡¦ model. Eighteen hypotheses are proposed. Structural equation modeling was used to test the theoretical models with the 164 responses which were randomly drawn from the listing company in Taiwan Stock Exchange. The results validate the following relationships: 1.Budgetary participation and budgetary emphasis have indirect effects on managerial performance and job satisfaction through self-efficacy. 2.Budgetary participation has indirect effects on managerial performance and job satisfaction through affective attitudes-trust in superior and organizational commitment. 3.Budgetary participation enhances self-efficacy and then improving managers¡¦ attitudes. 4.Budgetary emphasis directly influences budgetary slack. 5.Managers¡¦ trust in superior enhances their organizational commitment. 6.Managers¡¦ job satisfaction improves their performance. Although the relationship between trust in superior and managerial performance is not supported in the comprehensive model, the mediating roles of self-efficacy, trust and organizational commitment are validated. In other words, the cognitive and attitudinal effects of budgetary participation are supported in this study. However, this study suggests a positive path from budgetary slack toward job satisfyaction, which implies that proper slack may result in higher managers¡¦ job satisfaction. This study provides suggestions for future researches and management implications for practical business managements.

Most previous studies emphasized on the single consequence with respect to the effect of budgetary emphasis on budgetary slack or other dysfunctional behaviors, however, the relationships among these dysfunctional behaviors are seldom investigated. In order to understand the relationships among those dysfunctional behaviors, this study attempted to explore a structure model of past performance, perceived environment uncertainty, consideration leadership style, budgetary emphasis and three dysfunctional behaviors including budgetary slack, job-related tension and managerial short-term orientation. The empirical data was randomly drawn from 175 manufacturing managers in Taiwan Security Exchange. The empirical evidence of this research revealed as follows: 1. Managers have no incentive to create budgetary slack in a business which does not evaluate manager¡¦s performance with budgetary goal achievement. There is a significant positive relationship between past performance and budgetary slack, but the direct effect does not exist. The effect of past performance on budgetary slack is indirectly through budgetary emphasis. Similarly, perceived environment uncertainty and consideration leadership style affecting budgetary slack isn¡¦t directly but indirectly by budgetary emphasis. 2. Between budgetary slack and managerial short-term orientation, budgetary slack and job-related tension may exist a spillover effect. While reducing the propensity to build budgetary slack might induce managerial short-term orientation and job-related tension. 3. Weather no matter budget achievement evaluates performance, past performance directly influences the job-related tension. The manager whose performance is poor could have the higher job-related tension. 4. In different industry, the factor that influencing the organization to practice the budget control system is also different. In traditional industry, past performance is the important factor that affecting organization to implement the budget control system and induce the dysfunction behaviors, but perceived environment uncertainty is the important factor in the electronic information industry.