The influence of individual audit committee chairs, CEOs, and CFOs on corporate reporting and operating decisions.

摘要

This paper examines the association between individual managers and corporate reporting and operating decisions. To examine this question, I develop a dataset of 241 individual CEOs and CFOs, as well as audit committee chairs, covering the period of 1988 to 2009. Although audit committee chairs are tasked with monitoring insiders and not actually preparing the financial results, research suggests that each of these management groups could exert their individual "styles" on the reporting and operating decisions. Using this dataset, I find that each of these groups significantly influence accounting- and non-accounting-based corporate decisions. Also, I examine whether the influence of these individuals is impacted by characteristics of the corporation's operating environment. Using individual proxies for managerial discretion and job demands, as well as developing index measures for each of these constructs, I find that the influence of these particular managers is not impacted by the amount of discretion they have or their perceived job demands. Last, I find evidence that observable demographic measures explain some of the managers' decisions. These results add to the literature concerning the importance of individual managers to corporate decisions because they suggest that managers besides the CFO can significantly influence reporting and operating decisions, and the influence of these managers extends beyond accrual-based techniques to include real activities management decisions.