企业间高管联结与会计信息可比性——基于组织间模仿行为的实证研究

Inter-corporate Top Managers' Ties and Accounting Information Comparability:An Empirical Study on the Perspective of Inter-organizational Imitation

在我国特殊转型经济环境下,社会关系网络成为企业生存发展的一种重要非正式机制。本文利用2010-2014年中国沪、深两市A股上市公司数据,采用线性回归模型,从组织间模仿视角考察了企业间高管联结对会计信息可比性的影响及其作用机制,并进一步研究了高管的兼任职位对企业间高管联结与会计信息可比性关系的调节作用。研究表明,企业会计政策选择存在组织间模仿行为,即存在高管联结关系的配对公司之间有更相似的会计政策选择,应计及盈余结构更加相似,会计信息可比性更高。当高管任职公司财务部门负责人时,这种影响更为显著。本文不仅从新的理论分析视角丰富了会计信息可比性影响因素的相关研究,在实践上也为监管部门规范会计准则的执行提供了一定的借鉴。

Traditional research pays more attention to the influence of effect factors on financial statement comparability under the formal institution(accounting standard), but neglects informal institution such as social relationships, the mutual influence of person's behavior and its impact on firm's accounting information quality. Under the special environments of transition economy in China and the network of social relationships has become an important informal mechanism for the survival and development of enterprises. Using the observations of A-share firms listed in Chinese Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges Markets from 2010 to 2014 as the samples, based on the information dissemination role, we use the linear regression model(LRM) to investigate the influence of inter-corporate top managers' ties on the accounting information comparability and its mechanism. In addition, we investigate the moderating effect of the inter-corporate top managers' concurrent positions in the focal firm. The first part of empirical results shows that there exists inter-organizational imitation in the choice of accounting policies and resulting in a more similar to the accruals and earnings structure, it means that two companies managed by the same executives, subject to the same management style, are more likely to have comparable earnings than two firms managed by two different executives. Further study found that the similarity is higher when the inter-corporate manager has accounting-relevant position or experience, particularly when the top manager is a CFO in the interlock firm. So we can conclude that inter-corporate top manager plays an important role in the accounting information comparability, which implies that it is necessary to inspect top managers' inter-corporate relationship influences except for top managers' natural property. Compared to existing literature, this paper provides a new theoretical perspective on the accounting information comparability, and it also provides further empirical evidence of inter-corporate networks in corporate accounting treatment decisions. Moreover, the regulators should pay more attention to the influences from the inter-corporate network. In a word, this paper will enrich the accounting information comparability research and networks research, and give some enlightenment to standard setters.