مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد تاثیر استراتژی کسب و کار در محیط اطلاعات شرکت – Sage 2017

Accounting information serves to decrease information asymmetries between managers with private information and external capital providers regarding the expected profitability of firms’ investment opportunities (e.g., the lemons problem in Akerlof (1970)). It also mitigates agency costs that arise from the separation of firms’ ownership and control (Beyer, Cohen, Lys, & Walther, 2010). Healy and Palepu (2001) argue that the ‘‘demand for financial reporting and disclosure arises from information asymmetry and agency conflicts between managers and outside investors’’ (p. 406). Beyond mandated disclosures, investors obtain information about firms from both internal and external sources. Internal sources of information include voluntary disclosures such as management earnings guidance and press releases, while intermediaries such as financial analysts and the business press provide external information. Beyer et al. (2010) note that there is little evidence to date on the associations among firms’ information environments, voluntary disclosure practices, and analyst forecasts. We address this gap in the literature by examining these associations in the context of an underlying determinant of firms’ information environments—their business strategies.1 Using agency and organizational theories, we focus on the association between firms’ business strategies and their information environments. We begin by investigating the extent to which internal and external information sources (e.g., management earnings guidance, press releases, analyst following, and business press coverage) differ across business strategies. We then examine whether business strategy ultimately helps explain the observed variation in information asymmetry. This study is important because organizational theory provides a framework for understanding how firms’ business strategies can contribute to firms’ financial disclosures and information environments. We use this framework to address Beyer et al.’s (2010) ‘‘call for researchers to consider interdependencies between the various decisions that shape the corporate information environment’’ (p. 296). We also address Aboody and Lev’s (2000) argument that the ‘‘[i]dentification of the major sources or firm-specific drivers of information asymmetry’’ is research with public policy implications (p. 2748). Prior strategy research suggests that firms choose business strategies early in their history and once chosen are stable over time (Hambrick, 1983; Snow & Hambrick, 1980). Prior research on executive compensation identifies business strategies as a source of agency problems (e.g., Rajagopalan, 1997; Rajagopalan & Finkelstein, 1992). We extend this line of research by investigating whether firms’ business strategies underlie differences in disclosure practices and information environments.