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Full-Text Articles in Accounting
Family Entrenchment And Internal Control: Evidence From S&P 1500 Firms, Xia Chen, Mei Feng, Chan Li
Family Entrenchment And Internal Control: Evidence From S&P 1500 Firms, Xia Chen, Mei Feng, Chan Li
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
We examine whether family owners exploit internal control weaknesses for entrenchment purposes and whether the public disclosure requirement under SOX 404 helps alleviate this entrenchment. We find supportive evidence for both questions. In the initial years of SOX 404 implementation (2004 and 2005), ineffective internal control in family CEO firms is more conducive to entrenchment - measured by the occurrence of misstatements, frauds, and related party transactions - than ineffective internal control in nonfamily firms is. With the public disclosure requirement of SOX 404 in place, family CEO firms are more likely to remediate internal control weaknesses, and the resulting …
Family Firms And Labor Market Regulation, Morten Bennedsen, Sterling Huang, Hannes F. Wagner, Stefan Zeume
Family Firms And Labor Market Regulation, Morten Bennedsen, Sterling Huang, Hannes F. Wagner, Stefan Zeume
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
In a panel across twenty-eight countries over 10 years, we show that family firms on average enjoy performance advantages over nonfamily firms only when labor markets are less regulated. We confirm this result in a matched firm sample using a survey-based instrument as a family control. Furthermore, family firms exhibit lower variation in employment levels in less-regulated labor markets, supporting the notion that labor relations drive family firms’ performance advantages. Our results are consistent with the notion that both family ownership and labor market reforms provide employment protection and thus partly substitute as governance mechanisms.
Family Firm Research: A Review, Qiang Cheng
Family Firm Research: A Review, Qiang Cheng
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
This article reviews family firm studies in the finance and accounting literature, primarily those conducted using data from the United States and China. Family owners have unique features such as concentrated ownership, long investment horizon, and reputation concerns. Given the distinguishing features of family ownership and control, family firms face unique agency conflicts. We discuss the agency problems in family firms and review the findings of recent family firm studies. We call for more research to understand the unique family effects and encourage more research on Chinese family firms. Part I of the article discusses the fundaments of family firms: …
Conservatism And Equity Ownership Of The Founding Family, Shuping Chen, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng
Conservatism And Equity Ownership Of The Founding Family, Shuping Chen, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
We investigate the impact of founding family ownership on accounting conservatism. Family ownership is characterised by large, under-diversified equity stake and long investment horizon. These features give family owners both the incentives and the ability to implement conservative financial reporting to reduce legal liability and mitigate agency conflicts with other stakeholders. Since CEOs can have different incentives towards conservatism, we focus on ownership of non-CEO founding family members in our investigation. We find that conservatism increases with non-CEO family ownership, supporting our prediction. This relationship becomes insignificant in family firms with founders serving as CEOs, either due to founder CEOs' …
Family Ownership And Ceo Turnovers, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Zhonglan Dai
Family Ownership And Ceo Turnovers, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Zhonglan Dai
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
This paper investigates the impact of the founding family’s presence on CEO turnover decisions. We find that family firms managed by CEOs outside the founding family (i.e., professional CEO family firms) have higher CEO turnover-performance sensitivity than family firms managed by family members (i.e., family CEO firms) or non-family firms. These results are robust to alternative performance measures and CEO turnover definitions. Additional analyses indicate that higher family ownership leads to even higher (lower) turnover-performance sensitivity in professional CEO family firms (family CEO firms). These results indicate that, with regard to CEO turnover decisions, better monitoring of CEOs by family …
Are Family Firms More Tax Aggressive Than Non-Family Firms?, Shuping Chen, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Terry Shevlin
Are Family Firms More Tax Aggressive Than Non-Family Firms?, Shuping Chen, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Terry Shevlin
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
Taxes represent a significant cost to the firm and shareholders, and it is generally expected that shareholders prefer tax aggressiveness. However, this argument ignores potential non-tax costs that can accompany tax aggressiveness, especially those arising from agency problems. Firms owned/run by founding family members are characterized by a unique agency conflict between dominant and small shareholders. Using multiple measures to capture tax aggressiveness and founding family presence, we find that family firms are less tax aggressive than their non-family counterparts, ceteris paribus. This result suggests that family owners are willing to forgo tax benefits to avoid the non-tax cost of …
Are Us Family Firms Subject To Agency Problems? Evidence From Ceo Turnover And Firm Valuation, Xia Chen, Zhonglan Dai
Are Us Family Firms Subject To Agency Problems? Evidence From Ceo Turnover And Firm Valuation, Xia Chen, Zhonglan Dai
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
This paper investigates the impact of the founding family's presence in US public firms on the extent of agency problems related to CEO turnover decisions and on firm valuations after poor performance. In particular, we focus on three types of US public firms: family CEO firms, professional CEO family firms (family firms managed by a hired CEO outside the founding family), and non-family firms. We hypothesize that, the agency problem arising from the expropriation of small shareholders by large shareholders in family CEO firms and the agency problem arising from the separation of ownership and control in non-family firms, lead …