The previous studies regarding cost stickiness consider the existence of fixed costs, future expected outlook of products, and managers’agency costs as determinants of the sticky behavior of certain costs categories. Especially they focused on how the selling and general administration costs(SGAC) behave as sales declines, using the above mentioned variables as drivers of cost stickiness. But the previous studies ignore how managers’agency costs and business strategies of firms may influence cost stickiness.
Managers’opportunistic behavior can have different impacts on cost stickiness of certain expenses such as R&D and SGAC. For example, as agency costs of managers increase, the stickiness of SGAC increases because managers get personal utilities from SGAC. On the other hand, as agency costs of managers increase, the stickiness of R&D decreases because managers’annual or near term compensation gets higher as investment in R&D decreases.
Therefore the purposes of this thesis are (a) first to investigate how SGAC and R&D expenses behave as managers’agency costs vary among firms and firms choose different business strategies and (b) next to explore whether or not the governance mechanisms of the firm can have any moderating effects on the cost stickiness patterns of those expenses. The hypotheses of this thesis can be summarized as follows:
Firstly, we investigate whether or not agency costs can have any different effects on the stickiness behaviors of SGAC and R&D expenses. As sales decline, the stickiness of SGAC and R&D can be different because of agency problems. As sales decline, managers may have incentives to reduce SGAC less. However, managers may have incentives to reduce R&D expenses greatly as sales decline.
Secondly, the strategy can determine the stickiness patterns of SGAC and R&D expenses. In this thesis we consider two generic strategies(cost leadership and product differentiation strategy) and empirically investigate how cost stickiness patterns of those two expenses differ as sales varies.
Thirdly, various governance mechanisms can control managers’agency problems and thus can have significant impacts on the behavior of cost stickiness. We investigate how various governance mechanisms can have any moderating impacts on (a) the relationship between agency costs and cost stickiness of two types of expenses(SGAC and R&D) and (b) the relationship between business strategy and cost stickiness of two types of expenses(SGAC and R&D).
To test empirically the above mentioned hypotheses, we gathered firm-year data of manufacturing firms from 1999 to 2012. The sample firms are listed on the Korean Stock Exchange. The total data points are 3,970. The results we found can be summarized as follows:
Firstly, for those firms whose agency problems are high(above the median value of free cash flow used as a proxy of agency costs), the stickiness of SGAC increases but the stickiness of R&D decreases as sales decline. The results imply that in case of SGAC managers are not willing to reduce their perquisite consumption in proportion with sales reduction. On the other hand, in case of R&D managers have incentives to reduce R&D more. That is, the cost stickiness of R&D expenses rather decrease because reduction of R&D can increase their near-term monetary compensation.
Secondly, for those firms that implement cost leadership strategy the stickiness of SGAC decreases and for those firms that implement product leadership strategy the stickiness of R&D increases. The results imply that for those firms that implement cost leadership strategy, it is very critical to value maximization to efficiently control SGAC and thus the stickiness of SGAC decreases as sales decline. On the other hand, for those firms that implement product leadership strategy, it is very critical to value maximization to maintain R&D as before to innovate and thus the stickiness of R&D increases as sales decline.
Thirdly, we investigate how governance mechanisms influence the cost stickiness behaviors of SGAC and R&D for those firms whose agency costs are high(above the median value of free cash flow). The results are that as the effectiveness of governance mechanisms improves, (a) the cost stickiness of SGAC decreases and (b) the cost stickiness of R&D increases.
Lastly, we explore what impacts, if any, governance mechanisms have on the relationship between business strategies and the cost stickiness patterns of SGAC and R&D expenses. The results are that (a) for those firms which implement cost leadership strategy the stickiness of SGAC decreases as some(not all) of the governance mechanisms improve and (b) for those firms which implement product leadership strategy the stickiness of R&D increases as some(not all) of the governance mechanism improve.
The empirical evidence suggests that agency costs and business strategy have differential impacts on the cost stickiness of SGAC and R&D. And effective governance mechanisms moderate those differential cost stickiness behaviors of SGAC and R&D that agency costs and business strategy induce.