IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijmfpp/v12y2016i3p295-313.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Working capital management: evidence from Norway

Author

Listed:
  • Hakim Lyngstadaas
  • Terje Berg

Abstract

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of whether working capital management (WCM) has an effect on the profitability of small- and medium-sized Norwegian firms. Design/methodology/approach - – The data comprise 21,075 Norwegian small- and medium-sized enterprises and 84,300 observations made between 2010 and 2013. Panel data regressions were applied with fixed effects and a two-stage least squares analysis was employed to control for endogeneity. Findings - – The results indicate that reducing cash conversion cycle will increase profitability. Even though endogeneity may exist, this does not affect the results from the previous analysis. Similar results are also obtained when industry-specific effects are controlled for, supporting the robustness of the results. The relevance of quadratic dependencies of the profitability on independent variables was also identified and suggests a decreasing trend of return on assets with increasing values of the WCM’s characteristic variables. Research limitations/implications - – Drawing on similar studies, this study confirms that WCM is relevant for firms’ profitability. Practical implications - – The practice of aggressive working capital policy in Norwegian firms is confirmed by the results of this study. Originality/value - – This study contributes to the current research on the relationship between WCM and profitability by using a large dataset to add further robustness to results, and thus verifying whether or not the results in previous studies may be confirmed or not. Moreover, this is the first published study about this relationship among Norwegian firms in different industries, thus filling a gap in similar research conducted in other European countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Hakim Lyngstadaas & Terje Berg, 2016. "Working capital management: evidence from Norway," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 12(3), pages 295-313, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijmfpp:v:12:y:2016:i:3:p:295-313
    DOI: 10.1108/IJMF-01-2016-0012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJMF-01-2016-0012/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJMF-01-2016-0012/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/IJMF-01-2016-0012?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.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Najib H. S Farhan & Faozi A. Almaqtari & Ebrahim Mohammed Al-Matari & Nabil Ahmed M. SENAN & Waleed M. Alahdal & Saddam A. Hazaea, 2021. "Working Capital Management Policies in Indian Listed Firms: A State-Wise Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-25, April.
    2. Hakim Lyngstadaas, 2020. "Packages or systems? Working capital management and financial performance among listed U.S. manufacturing firms," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 31(4), pages 403-450, December.
    3. Nasser A. Alsulayhim, 2019. "The Relationship between Working Capital Management and Profitability," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(8), pages 142-152, August.
    4. Rezart Demiraj & Suzan Dsouza & Mohammad Abiad, 2022. "Working Capital Management Impact on Profitability: Pre-Pandemic and Pandemic Evidence from the European Automotive Industry," Risks, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-21, December.
    5. Dalci, Ilhan & Ozyapici, Hasan, 2018. "Working capital management policy in health care: The effect of leverage," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(11), pages 1266-1272.
    6. Muhammad Azeem Naz & Rizwan Ali & Ramiz Ur Rehman & Collins G. Ntim, 2022. "Corporate governance, working capital management, and firm performance: Some new insights from agency theory," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(5), pages 1448-1461, July.
    7. Burney, Robert B. & James, Hui Liang & Wang, Hongxia, 2021. "Working capital management and CEO age," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).
    8. Minhas Akbar & Ahsan Akbar & Muhammad Umar Draz, 2021. "Global Financial Crisis, Working Capital Management, and Firm Performance: Evidence From an Islamic Market Index," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(2), pages 21582440211, May.
    9. Ali I. El Saleh & Doureige J. Jurdi, 2021. "Stock performance under alternative Shariah screening methods: Evidence from Australia," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(3), pages 4339-4388, September.
    10. Korneta Piotr, 2018. "Net Promoter Score, Growth, and Profitability of Transportation Companies," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 54(2), pages 136-148, June.
    11. Dina Korent, 2021. "Target adjustment model and new working capital management performance measure: Evidence from Croatia," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 39(1), pages 135-162.
    12. Wetzel, Philipp & Hofmann, Erik, 2019. "Supply chain finance, financial constraints and corporate performance: An explorative network analysis and future research agenda," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 364-383.

    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:eme:ijmfpp:v:12:y:2016:i:3:p:295-313. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.