دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی فشار بدهی و استفاده تعاملی از سیستم های کنترل: تاثیرات بر هزینه بدهی - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

We study if debt pressure drives the use of interactive management accounting and control systems (MACS) and its consequences. We build on Simons (1990) and argue that financing pressures can threaten strategic investment. To alleviate debt pressures and reduce information asymmetries with lenders, managers are predicted to increase the interactive use of MACS. However, because individual MACS have different features, not all interactive use of individual MACS equally serves to assuage debt pressures. We predict that firms facing high debt pressure interactively use traditional MACS and that when individual MACS use befits the level of debt pressure, firms benefit by experiencing future decreases in their cost of debt. Our findings confirm these predictions. We contribute to the literature by showing that pressures from external stakeholders influence interactive use. We also suggest a new relevant firm outcome affected by MACS use: the future cost of debt. Finally, in additional analyses, we show that concerns over innovation may lead managers to choose apparently non-optimal MACS for interactive use, consistent with managers often juggling conflicting pressures.

Discussion and conclusions

We study interactive use and consequences of individual MACS within a specific uncertainty condition: high debt pressure. We focus on two related questions: (i) whether high debt pressure determines the interactive use of MACS, and (ii) how the interactive use of individual MACS (balanced scorecard, cost accounting and budget system), under different levels of debt pressure, affects the future cost of debt. Our work builds on and supports Simons, (1991, p. 50) claim that the choice of the interactive control system is linked with characteristics of the firm setting. A distinguishing feature of individual MACS is that they generate different information content. Therefore, their interactive use may focus the attention of the organization on different issues. We predict that the individual MACS that managers use interactively is the one that better focuses the organization on the specific set of information and control mechanisms that helps to resolve the strategic uncertainties that firms face. Hence, we predict that the information content generated is a key element in explaining interactive MACS use. Against this backdrop, we expect that managers use interactively those individual MACS that provide the idiosyncratic information that best fits their perceived needs. In our setting it is high debt pressure in firms with limited access to public capital markets. When firms have strong ties with their lenders, lenders are in a position to exert pressure, gather and process information about the firm and its management. Lenders are particularly interested in information that allows assessing financial distress and the firm debt-paying ability, to decide how much to lend, and on what terms. Hence, as the threat of financing constraints grows (and thus, to the firm’s continuous strategic investment), debt pressures to provide decision-relevant information also increase, and managers, through the interactive use of MACS, are predicted to pass those pressures to the whole organization, focusing firm’s attention on this key strategic uncertainty.