IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/advacc/v43y2018icp60-69.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The adoption of voluntary clawback provisions and the broader commitment hypothesis

Author

Listed:
  • Mburu, Henry Kimani
  • Tang, Alex P.

Abstract

“Clawback Provisions” are corporate governance mechanisms intended to reduce managers' opportunistic behavior. Voluntary clawback provisions have been associated with many positive consequences in extant literature. A causal relation has been used to explain this association. However, because the clawbacks have rarely been enforced, doubts have been raised about the robustness of the clawback provisions. If the clawbacks are seldom enforced, how could they have an impact on the managers' behavior? Denis (2012) proposes the possibility that the adoption of the clawback provisions serves as a signal of the board's broader commitment to heighten higher financial integrity. We call this the Broader Commitment Hypothesis. Within this broader commitment framework, it is not the clawback provision in and of itself that leads to more accurate financial reporting. Rather, there are other things at work. We hypothesize and find that boards also change managers' compensation scheme to incentivize them to promote reporting quality. In so doing, a firm's financial reporting risk decreases, and managers have smaller proportion of unexercised options. Our overall evidence supports the Broader Commitment Hypothesis.

Suggested Citation

  • Mburu, Henry Kimani & Tang, Alex P., 2018. "The adoption of voluntary clawback provisions and the broader commitment hypothesis," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 60-69.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:advacc:v:43:y:2018:i:c:p:60-69
    DOI: 10.1016/j.adiac.2018.09.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0882611017300949
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.adiac.2018.09.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hall, Brian J. & Murphy, Kevin J., 2002. "Stock options for undiversified executives," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-42, February.
    2. Chava, Sudheer & Purnanandam, Amiyatosh, 2010. "CEOs versus CFOs: Incentives and corporate policies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 263-278, August.
    3. Suraj Srinivasan, 2005. "Consequences of Financial Reporting Failure for Outside Directors: Evidence from Accounting Restatements and Audit Committee Members," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 291-334, May.
    4. Armstrong, Christopher S. & Vashishtha, Rahul, 2012. "Executive stock options, differential risk-taking incentives, and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(1), pages 70-88.
    5. Chan, Lilian H. & Chen, Kevin C.W. & Chen, Tai-Yuan & Yu, Yangxin, 2012. "The effects of firm-initiated clawback provisions on earnings quality and auditor behavior," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 180-196.
    6. Bengt Holmstrom & Steven N. Kaplan, 2001. "Corporate Governance and Merger Activity in the United States: Making Sense of the 1980s and 1990s," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 121-144, Spring.
    7. Ingolf Dittmann & Ernst Maug & Oliver Spalt, 2010. "Sticks or Carrots? Optimal CEO Compensation when Managers Are Loss Averse," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(6), pages 2015-2050, December.
    8. Neil Brisley, 2006. "Executive Stock Options: Early Exercise Provisions and Risk‐taking Incentives," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(5), pages 2487-2509, October.
    9. Ed Dehaan & Frank Hodge & Terry Shevlin, 2013. "Does Voluntary Adoption of a Clawback Provision Improve Financial Reporting Quality?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(3), pages 1027-1062, September.
    10. Denis, Diane K., 2012. "Mandatory clawback provisions, information disclosure, and the regulation of securities markets," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 197-200.
    11. Huddart, Steven, 1994. "Employee stock options," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 207-231, September.
    12. Francis, Jennifer & LaFond, Ryan & Olsson, Per & Schipper, Katherine, 2005. "The market pricing of accruals quality," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 295-327, June.
    13. Bergstresser, Daniel & Philippon, Thomas, 2006. "CEO incentives and earnings management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 511-529, June.
    14. Kim, Jeong-Bon & Li, Yinghua & Zhang, Liandong, 2011. "CFOs versus CEOs: Equity incentives and crashes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 713-730, September.
    15. Gormley, Todd A. & Matsa, David A. & Milbourn, Todd, 2013. "CEO compensation and corporate risk: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 79-101.
    16. David Aboody & Baruch Lev, 2000. "Information Asymmetry, R&D, and Insider Gains," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(6), pages 2747-2766, December.
    17. He, Jie (Jack) & Tian, Xuan, 2013. "The dark side of analyst coverage: The case of innovation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 856-878.
    18. Rajgopal, Shivaram & Shevlin, Terry, 2002. "Empirical evidence on the relation between stock option compensation and risk taking," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 145-171, June.
    19. Chan, Lilian H. & Chen, Kevin C.W. & Chen, Tai-Yuan, 2013. "The effects of firm-initiated clawback provisions on bank loan contracting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 659-679.
    20. Coles, Jeffrey L. & Daniel, Naveen D. & Naveen, Lalitha, 2006. "Managerial incentives and risk-taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 431-468, February.
    21. Mark A. Chen & Daniel T. Greene & James E. Owers, 2015. "The Costs and Benefits of Clawback Provisions in CEO Compensation," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(1), pages 108-154.
    22. Armstrong, Christopher S. & Larcker, David F. & Ormazabal, Gaizka & Taylor, Daniel J., 2013. "The relation between equity incentives and misreporting: The role of risk-taking incentives," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 327-350.
    23. Nicholas C. Barberis, 2013. "Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 173-196, Winter.
    24. Spalt, Oliver G., 2013. "Probability Weighting and Employee Stock Options," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(4), pages 1085-1118, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cha, Yunshil & Gill, Susan & Wong-On-Wing, Bernard, 2023. "Clawback policy enforcement: To disclose or not to disclose," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    2. Patrick Velte, 2020. "Determinants and consequences of clawback provisions in management compensation contracts: a structured literature review on empirical evidence," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(3), pages 1417-1450, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Biddle, Gary C. & Chan, Lilian H. & Joo, Jeong Hwan, 2024. "Clawback adoptions, managerial compensation incentives, capital investment mix and efficiency," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    2. Wruck, Karen H. & Wu, YiLin, 2021. "The relation between CEO equity incentives and the quality of accounting disclosures: New evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    3. Niklas Kreilkamp & Sascha Matanovic & Maximilian Schmidt & Arnt Wöhrmann, 2023. "How executive incentive design affects risk-taking: a literature review," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 17(7), pages 2349-2374, October.
    4. Croci, Ettore & Petmezas, Dimitris, 2015. "Do risk-taking incentives induce CEOs to invest? Evidence from acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-23.
    5. Hyungshin Park & Dimitris Vrettos, 2015. "The Moderating Effect of Relative Performance Evaluation on the Risk Incentive Properties of Executives’ Equity Portfolios," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(5), pages 1055-1108, December.
    6. Ilona Babenko & Benjamin Bennett & John M Bizjak & Jeffrey L Coles & Jason J Sandvik, 2023. "Clawback Provisions and Firm Risk," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(2), pages 191-239.
    7. Merz, Alexander, 2017. "What have we learned from SFAS 123r and IFRS 2? A review of existing evidence and future research suggestions," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 14-33.
    8. Cha, Yunshil & Gill, Susan & Wong-On-Wing, Bernard, 2023. "Clawback policy enforcement: To disclose or not to disclose," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    9. Martin Nienhaus, 2022. "Executive equity incentives and opportunistic manager behavior: new evidence from a quasi-natural experiment," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 1276-1318, December.
    10. Hong, Jieying, 2019. "Managerial compensation incentives and corporate debt maturity: Evidence from FAS 123R," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 388-414.
    11. Susana Álvarez-Díez & J. Baixauli-Soler & María Belda-Ruiz, 2014. "Are we using the wrong letters? An analysis of executive stock option Greeks," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 22(2), pages 237-262, June.
    12. Han, Feng & Qin, Qi & Peabody, S. Drew, 2022. "Does incentive conflict between CEOs and CFOs benefit firms? Implications for corporate decision-making," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    13. Peng, Qiyuan & Yin, Sirui, 2021. "Does the executive labor market discipline? Labor market incentives and earnings management," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 62-86.
    14. J. Samuel Baixauli-Soler & Maria Belda-Ruiz & Gregorio Sanchez-Marin, 2017. "An executive hierarchy analysis of stock options: Does gender matter?," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 737-766, October.
    15. Pinto, Helena & Widdicks, Martin, 2014. "Do compensation plans with performance targets provide better incentives?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 662-694.
    16. Kim, Kyonghee & Patro, Sukesh & Pereira, Raynolde, 2017. "Option incentives, leverage, and risk-taking," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 1-18.
    17. Patrick Velte, 2020. "Determinants and consequences of clawback provisions in management compensation contracts: a structured literature review on empirical evidence," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(3), pages 1417-1450, November.
    18. Kim, Jeong-Bon & Song, Byron Y. & Wang, Zheng, 2017. "Special purpose entities and bank loan contracting," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 133-152.
    19. David Aboody & Shai Levi & Dan Weiss, 2018. "Managerial incentives, options, and cost-structure choices," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 422-451, June.
    20. Jeffrey L. Callen & Xiaohua Fang, 2020. "Local Gambling Norms and Audit Pricing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 151-173, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:advacc:v:43:y:2018:i:c:p:60-69. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/advances-in-accounting/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.