경영전략과 발생액의 질 (Business Strategy and Accruals Quality)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계저널 / 25권 / 3호 / 261 ~ 305페이지
· 저자명 : 최규담, 김갑순, 유현수

초록

본 연구는 발생액의 질이 기업에 대한 포괄적인 상황정보(underlying factor)인 경영전략에 의해 설명될 수 있는지에 대한 실증적 연구이다. 기업을 경영전략의 특성에 따라 구분하는 경우 개별적인 변수들이 제공하지 못하는 포괄적이고 중요한 정보를 제공할 가능성이 높다. 따라서, 경영자의 회계선택 결과가 반영된 발생액의 질을 분석함에 있어서도 경영전략에 따른 특성을 반영할 필요가 있는지를 확인하고자 하는 것이다. 즉, 발생액의 질에 영향을 미치는 통제변수를 모두 통제하고서도 경영전략이 발생액의 질을 설명하는지 여부에 대하여 분석하였다. 한편, 일반기업과 기업규모, 정부지원제도 등 경영환경에 있어 그 특성에 있어 차이가 있는 중소기업이라는 사실이 경영전략과 발생액의 질 간의 관계에 영향을 미치는지에 대하여도 추가적으로 검토를 하였다.
발생액의 질을 종속변수로 하고 경영전략지수를 설명변수로 한 (가설 1)에 대한 분석결과는 발생액의 질의 측정치와 경영전략지수는 유의한 양(+)의 관계가 있었고 선도형이 다른 유형보다 발생액의 질의 측정치가 더 높았다(즉, 발생액의 질이 더 낮았다). 즉, 선도형은 발생액 이익조정의 유인과 기회가 많아서 발생액 이익조정을 지속하여 재량적 발생액의 크기가 더 커서 발생액의 질이 더 낮고 방어형은 원가최소화와 위험회피에 주안점을 두므로 적발위험이 큰 발생액 이익조정을 지속하기가 어려워 상대적으로 재량적 발생액의 크기가 더 적어 발생액의 질이 더 높았다. 한편, (가설 2)의 분석결과 중소기업일 경우 경영전략이 발생액의 질에 미치는 영향이 확대(즉, 경영전략이 발생액의 질에 미치는 영향력이 상대적으로 더 증가)되는 것으로 나타났다.
본 연구의 결과는 개별적인 특성 정보가 아닌 포괄적인 상황정보인 경영전략이 발생액의 질과 관련성이 있을 수 있다는 점을 실증하였고, 중소기업인 경우에는 소유경영 등으로 그러한 관련성이 더 증가할 것이라는 점을 실증하였다는 점에서 큰 의미가 있다.

영어초록

We investigate whether a firm’s business strategy is associated with its accruals quality. We predict that accrual quality of a firm close to prospector is lower than close to analyzer and defender (Hypothesis 1). Further, we investigate whether the fact that a firm is a small and medium-sized enterprise under the Korean law affects the association between business strategy and accruals quality (Hypothesis 2). Our study is motivated by recent researches showing that business strategy measured by the Miles and Snow (1978, 2003)'s typology is associated with financial reporting decision-making activities (Bentley et al. 2013) and that accrual based earning management by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are bigger than by non-SMEs (Choi, et al 2010).
While many prior studies have investigated what can more explain incentives and/or opportunities for accrual based earning management, a firm’s business strategy may play a certain role as an underlying factor for them since it is more comprehensive and generalizable across industries than those specific individual variables previously considered for accrual based earning management. The business strategy may provide an even broader understanding of the factors that are ex ante determinants of accrual based earning management. According to the Miles and Snow (1978, 2003), prospector focuses on innovation, pursue new products and geographic markets and is more likely to be aggressive. Therefore, prospector has high growth potential, long-term stock incentive schemes and high level of capital needs, which are positively related to incentives of accrual based earning management, and unstable organization process and complex structure, which are opportunities for accrual based earnings management. By contrast, defender focuses on comparatively sound, stable and predictable areas and their aversion to risk and uncertainty(e.g., reputation costs associated with earnings management) would lead them to be passive in aggressive accrual based earnings management.
To address our research questions, we used DD (Dechow and Dichev 2002) for measuring accruals quality. We also classified each firm-year sample into three strategy types (i.e., prospector, analyzer and defender) whose STRATEGY score are 24-30, 13-23 and 6-12, respectively. STRATEGY score is measured based on six (6) factors from prior literature (e.g., Choi et al. 2015; Bentley, et al. 2013 and Higgins et al. 2015) that reflect different facets of the strategy: (1) the ratio of research and development to sales, (2) the ratio of employees to sales, (3) a growth opportunity measure (market-to-book ratio), (4) the ratio of marketing (SG&A) to sales, (5) employee fluctuations (standard deviation of total employees), and (6) capital intensity (net PPE scaled by total assets). Each of the six measures is intended to capture different elements of a firm’s business strategy.
We find from the test of Hypothesis 1 that DD value (accrual quality is better (poorer) when DD value is lower (higher) (i.e., the size of accrual is lower (higher)) are positively (+) associated with the strategy score at 1% significance level, which is consistent with our anticipation. We also find that DD value under prospector group is higher than that under defender group. These results indicate that the accruals quality of the firms closer to prospector is significantly poorer than those closer to defender. However, we could not entirely rule out the possibility that the higher DD under prospector group is interpreted as signaling by the management's expectation of the positive future economic substance. The results of Hypothesis 2 test show that the association between accruals quality and business strategy become stronger (i.e., positive (+)) when the firms are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In other words, the result indicates that accruals quality of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) become much poorer than non-small and medium-sized enterprises (non-SMEs) even if both have the same strategy score.
Our study is important since it helps provide a better understanding of the factors that affect a firm’s accrual quality. Further, our study enhances the understanding of features of small and medium-sized enterprises by showing that the relation between the accrual quality and business strategy is strengthened by SME. However, our study is limited in that the possibility that such positive (+) relationship between business strategy and the size of discretionary accruals may be signaling of the positive future economic substance is not been empirically and separately studied.

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