본 연구는 경영자의 이익조정 유인과 원가의 하방경직성 간의 관계를 검증하는 것이다. 경영자가 원가와 관련된 의사결정을 통해 이익조정을 수행한다면, 이익조정으로 인해 원가행태는 상이하게 나타날 것이다.
본 연구의 결과에 의하면 이익이 0보다 약간 큰, 상향의 이익조정 유인을 갖고 있는 구간에서는 판매관리비, 인건비 모두 하방탄력적인 원가행태를 나타냈고, 총원가 및 당기총제조원가는 대칭적인 원가행태를 나타내었다. 반면에 이익이 매우 큰, 하향의 이익조정 유인을 갖고 있는 구간에서는 잉여자원에 대한 적극적인 처분 등이 이루어지지 않아 총원가, 당기총제조원가, 판매관리비, 인건비 모두 하방경직성이 증가하는 것으로 나타났다. 또한 적자가 매우 큰 구간에 속하는 기업의 경우 하향의 이익조정 유인이 있는 것으로 나타나 총원가와 판매관리비, 인건비의 하방경직성은 증가하였다.
본 연구의 결과는 개별기업이 처한 상황에 따라 이익조정의 유인이 달라질 수 있으며, 이러한 이익조정의 결과로 비대칭적인 원가행태가 나타날 수 있음을 제시하고 있다.
The purpose of our empirical study is to investigate whether the manager’s earning management incentive can affect the degree of cost stickiness.
Managers manage their reported earnings to get perk or to affect the decisions of stakeholders(Schipper 1989). Managers might be more interested in real activity earnings management through cost management than in accrual based earnings management under scrutiny of external auditors. Chang and Paik(2009) suggested that managers adjust their Selling and General Administration expenses to smooth their Return on Assets through years. Lee and Nam(2010) reported that when revenues decline, managers can increase reported earnings by intentional cost cutting decisions.
As such incentives of earnings management, corporate environment or the level of reported earnings can be considered. For cost spending sizes and timing can be adjusted depending on business performance, cost behaviors could be different as a result of earning management. For example, when losses are likely to be reported, management would try to avoid losses by disposing of surplus resources or aggressively reducing costs with sales declining. Cost stickiness would then be minimized.
In contrast, managers with very large earnings would reduces the volatility of earnings or levels of reported earnings now to use the carried-over earnings in future. It is because investors in the market perceive volatile earnings negatively due to the difficulty of earnings prediction and high business uncertainty. Thus, when managers have incentives to adjust earnings downward, they will keep surplus resources and delay cost cutting even with their sales decreasing. Cost stickiness would then be strengthened.
However, when a firm's performance is much worse and its losses are very large, its manager might consider two costs related strategies. First, managers of Big- Bath incentives would recognize all the costs quickly even with sales decline to prepare for future performance and the cost stickiness will appear even larger. In contrast, if managers intend to reduce losses, they will actively reduce costs through disposal of the surplus resources or restructuring and the cost stickiness will be lessened. Therefore, if when the losses are very large, the cost stickiness could be strengthened or mitigated depending which strategy the managers choose.
We studied changes in cost behaviors of several firms with different types of earnings management incentives and confirmed that the manager's earnings management can affects the firm's cost behaviors.
We found that firms which report small earnings with upward earnings management incentive show relatively weaker cost stickiness. Selling, General, and Administrative Costs (SG&A), and Labor Costs (LC) of firms with small profits are less sticky and the total Costs (TC) and the total manufacturing costs (TMC) turn out to be symmetric. It indicates that managers cut costs more to avoid reporting losses with decrease in sales revenue. On the other hand, TC, TMC, SG&A, and LC reduction rates of firms with large profits were smaller when sales revenue decline. It implies that managers of large incomes do not cut costs enough in order to smooth earning by reducing earning fluctuation with sales reduction. Finally, TC, SG&A, and LC of firms with relatively large losses are very sticky. We found that managers in large loss firms are taking big-bath instead of saving costs for future performance.
The results of this study provide empirical evidence upon how earnings management incentives can affect the magnitude of cost stickiness.