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This conspectus attempts to achieve three objectives:

Outlines previous research into the factors influencing managers’ choice of accounting procedures and auditors’ acceptance of them, including regulatory action by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Studies data from 1980‐1996 SEC enforcement actions against big five accounting firms or their staff to investigate the levels of discretionary accruals made by the relevant clients during the period of investigation. Explains how the discretionary accruals are estimated over various time frames and shows that clients have more income decreasing accruals as the investigation takes place. Considers possible reasons for this and concludes that it is due to the auditors becoming more conservative.

Performance plans, a form of executive compensation plan, are designed to reward management for improved performance over the long run. Various accounting measures can be used to evaluate this performance: return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and earnings per share (EPS) are examples. This study employs these, as well as cash flow measures, on a sample of matched performance plan adopting and control firms to examine whether there is a difference in performance associated with the adoption of a plan. The results indicate that adopting firms display significantly greater growth in ROA, ROE, and working capital from operations to total assets (WCFO) than do control firms. This result continues to hold for ROE, but not ROA or WCFO, after controlling for economy‐wide growth.

Theoretical arguments have indicated that long‐term accounting‐based performance plans motivate executives to improve long‐run firm performance (Smith and Watts, 1982; Larcker, 1983). Following conflicting empirical evidence related to the stock market reaction associated with the adoption of accounting‐based long‐run performance plans, this study seeks to gain further insight into the effect of such plans on accounting income‐based and value added‐based measures of productivity and return. The results indicate that firms adopting accounting‐based performance plans do not experience any greater gains in accounting return or productivity measures than do a set of control firms. Thus, such plans may not have the intended effect. Because performance plans are a popular method of executive incentive compensation, further research on the impact of these plans is indicated.

This paper examines the ability of cash flow and earnings based measures of return to assess the differences between target firms and their industries and to explain target firms' abnormal returns during the takeover period. In a sample of 63 completed takeovers over the period 1977 to 1989, takeover targets have mean cash flow to total assets and earnings to total assets below their industry average in each of the three years preceding the year of the takeover. If these ratios are interpreted as measures of managerial performance, the implication is that target firms were underperformers which may have been taken over for a better use of their asset potential. Target firm abnormal returns observed during the takeover period are significantly related to both the difference between target firm and average industry earnings to total assets and to the difference in cash flow to total assets. Abnormal returns are negatively related to the difference in earnings to total assets, suggesting that target firm assets are indeed underutilized. The difference between target firm and target industry cash flow to total assets is positively related to target firm abnormal returns, suggesting that acquiring firms value the near term cash flow of targets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether proxy statement performance graph disclosures are influenced by the firm's governance structure and management concerns about relative performance.

Logistic regression is used to test whether the level of performance graph disclosure decreases with lower relative performance and higher insider director membership on the compensation committee of the board. Also, Z and t‐statistics test whether bias in the selected peer group benchmark is related to insider membership on the committee.

The empirical results suggest that reporting discretion was exercised for management's benefit. The amount of explicit disclosure on cumulative returns in the performance graph decreases as relative performance declines and decreases when insider directors serve on the compensation committee. Moreover, the presence of insider directors on the compensation committee is associated with a biased choice of peer group benchmark return.

The sample for the study consists of 141 large firms. Future research could examine a larger group of firms that vary in size or other disclosures.

These findings support recent actions taken to improve corporate governance. Further public policy steps could be taken. For example, the SEC could require firms to include an explanation for appointing insiders to the compensation committee.

The results are consistent with managers using discretion over information disclosures and suggest that compensation committees with insider members play a less active role in providing information that is helpful to shareholders.

Explains why financial analysts could find it useful to separate past earnings into discretionary accruals and earnings before discretionary accruals; referring to related research to develop hypotheses on the effects of both on the change in analysts’ earnings forecasts for the subsequent year. Tests these on a sample of 142 US manufacturing firms and presents the results which suggest that analysts do not decompose past earnings. Discusses three possible interpretations of the results and supports Sloan’s (1996) finding that the capital market does not seem to price accruals rationally.

The American Accounting Association (AAA) Committee on Accounting and Auditing Measurement (1991) had recommended that value added be considered for mandatory disclosure in the US in addition to the income and cash flow statements. This study examines empirically the relative merits of derived performance indicator numbers from value added reporting, accrual accounting and cash flow accounting. The results show that the derived performance indicator numbers based on net value added had lower variability and higher persistency than corresponding numbers based on either earnings or cash flows of 673 US firms for the 1981–1990 period. These results and other related considerations argue strongly in favor of the recommendation of the AAA Committee.

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Relative performance evaluation (RPE) involves board comparisons of firm performance to that of a peer group when evaluating CEO performance. To date, research on RPE in the USA has typically relied on models where RPE is implicitly assumed. In contrast, Bannister and Newman provide some direct evidence on the explicit RPE usage by US firms showing that it is limited and there is significant inter-industry variation in its use. The authors aim to focus on why boards in some industries employ RPE to a greater extent than those in other industries do using measures of industry discretion, industry homogeneity, industry competition.

The authors utilize the sample use in the Bannister and Newman study of RPE usage in industries (160 firms from the 1992 Fortune 250 with proxy statements for 1992 and 1993). The authors compile measures of industry membership (using SIC codes), industry discretion, industry homogeneity, and industry competition from Compustat a well. Multiple regression is used to test the hypotheses.

The authors find that the use of RPE at the industry level is significantly related to industry discretion (i.e. the degree of latitude that managers have over strategic and operational choices in the particular industry environment) and industry homogeneity, but not to industry competition.

The study is limited in terms of a dated sample (necessary to be consistent with the Bannister and Newman paper). It would bear updating. In addition, multi-year panel data could be used to generate more robust results. It would also be useful to replicate the study in other national (and hence governance) contexts.

The findings should help boards when deciding how to reward or punish CEOs and top managers for their firm performance by filtering out relative performance in a more rational manner (e.g. by taking relevant industry context into account).

In terms of originality, this is the first study, to the authors' knowledge, that investigates RPE at the industry level. It is valuable because industry discretion is an important contextual variable that a board of directors will find useful in evaluating managers since this type of discretion is beyond managerial control.