IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ororsc/v32y2021i3p544-567.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Being Counted and Remaining Accountable: Maintenance of Quarterly Earnings Guidance by U.S. Public Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Sun Hyun Park

    (Graduate School of Business, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, South Korea)

  • Kelly Patterson

    (Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California 95053)

Abstract

Organizations are often pressured to adopt and maintain institutionally supported practices. Why do some companies remain committed to these practices, despite high operational cost and widespread frustration with them? Although prior theorists have emphasized the importance of institutional pressure at the broader population level, less research attention has been paid to the abandonment of a practice as a result of resource dependence between a firm and market intermediaries. In this paper, we theorize intermediary coverage breadth and depth as two important structural indicators of resource dependence. Firms lacking in coverage breadth (as indicated by the degree of reporting by market intermediaries) and firms with deeper coverage (as evidenced by a prolonged relationship with market intermediaries) are less likely to abandon a practice due to an increase in power imbalance and mutual dependence within the firm-intermediary relationships. We also theorize how a firm’s resource dependence, as determined by coverage structure, moderates the firm’s sensitivity to (1) observed peer support for the practice, (2) the intermediary’s expectation regarding the continued use of the practice, and (3) performance deviations that fail to meet intermediary expectations. Our empirical study of the abandonment of quarterly earnings guidance by U.S. public companies during 2001–2010 provides overall support for our theoretical arguments.

Suggested Citation

  • Sun Hyun Park & Kelly Patterson, 2021. "Being Counted and Remaining Accountable: Maintenance of Quarterly Earnings Guidance by U.S. Public Companies," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(3), pages 544-567, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:32:y:2021:i:3:p:544-567
    DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2020.1401
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2020.1401
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/orsc.2020.1401?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David F. Larcker & Anastasia A. Zakolyukina, 2012. "Detecting Deceptive Discussions in Conference Calls," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 495-540, May.
    2. Danny Miller, 1991. "Stale in the Saddle: CEO Tenure and the Match Between Organization and Environment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(1), pages 34-52, January.
    3. Warren Bailey & Haitao Li & Connie X. Mao & Rui Zhong, 2003. "Regulation Fair Disclosure and Earnings Information: Market, Analyst, and Corporate Responses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(6), pages 2487-2514, December.
    4. Emilie R. Feldman & Stuart C. Gilson & Belén Villalonga, 2014. "Do analysts add value when they most can? Evidence from corporate spin-offs," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(10), pages 1446-1463, October.
    5. Mark DesJardine & Pratima Bansal, 2019. "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: How Negative External Evaluations Can Shorten Organizational Time Horizons," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(4), pages 761-780, July.
    6. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2005. "The economic implications of corporate financial reporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-3), pages 3-73, December.
    7. Kwang‐Ho Kim & Wenpin Tsai, 2012. "Social comparison among competing firms," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 115-136, February.
    8. Kim, Y. Han (Andy), 2013. "Self attribution bias of the CEO: Evidence from CEO interviews on CNBC," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 2472-2489.
    9. Julie Cotter & Irem Tuna & Peter D. Wysocki, 2006. "Expectations Management and Beatable Targets: How Do Analysts React to Explicit Earnings Guidance?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(3), pages 593-624, September.
    10. Alexander T. Nicolai & Ann‐Christine Schulz & Thomas W. Thomas, 2010. "What Wall Street Wants – Exploring the Role of Security Analysts in the Evolution and Spread of Management Concepts," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 162-189, January.
    11. Lubomir P. Litov & Patrick Moreton & Todd R. Zenger, 2012. "Corporate Strategy, Analyst Coverage, and the Uniqueness Paradox," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(10), pages 1797-1815, October.
    12. Amy P. Hutton, 2005. "Determinants of Managerial Earnings Guidance Prior to Regulation Fair Disclosure and Bias in Analysts' Earnings Forecasts," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(4), pages 867-914, December.
    13. Chen, Shuping & Matsumoto, Dawn & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2011. "Is silence golden? An empirical analysis of firms that stop giving quarterly earnings guidance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1-2), pages 134-150, February.
    14. Lauren Cohen & Andrea Frazzini & Christopher J. Malloy, 2012. "Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of "Independent" Directors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(6), pages 1039-1058, June.
    15. Joel F. Houston & Baruch Lev & Jennifer Wu Tucker, 2010. "To Guide or Not to Guide? Causes and Consequences of Stopping Quarterly Earnings Guidance," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(1), pages 4-4, March.
    16. Chen, Shuping & Matsumoto, Dawn & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2011. "Is silence golden? An empirical analysis of firms that stop giving quarterly earnings guidance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 134-150.
    17. Zhiyan Cao & Ganapathi S. Narayanamoorthy, 2011. "The Effect of Litigation Risk on Management Earnings Forecasts," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(1), pages 125-173, March.
    18. Bennet A. Zelner, 2009. "Using simulation to interpret results from logit, probit, and other nonlinear models," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(12), pages 1335-1348, December.
    19. Michelle Rogan & Henrich R. Greve, 2015. "Resource Dependence Dynamics: Partner Reactions to Mergers," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(1), pages 239-255, February.
    20. Vibha Gaba & Ann Terlaak, 2013. "Decomposing Uncertainty and Its Effects on Imitation in Firm Exit Decisions," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(6), pages 1847-1869, December.
    21. Joel F. Houston & Baruch Lev & Jennifer Wu Tucker, 2010. "To Guide or Not to Guide? Causes and Consequences of Stopping Quarterly Earnings Guidance," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(1), pages 143-185, March.
    22. Coller, M & Yohn, TL, 1997. "Management forecasts and information asymmetry: An examination of bid-ask spreads," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 181-191.
    23. Matthew Bidwell & Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, 2010. "Relationship Duration and Returns to Brokerage in the Staffing Sector," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(6), pages 1141-1158, December.
    24. Somnath Das & Re‐Jin Guo & Huai Zhang, 2006. "Analysts' Selective Coverage and Subsequent Performance of Newly Public Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1159-1185, June.
    25. Brandy L. Aven, 2015. "The Paradox of Corrupt Networks: An Analysis of Organizational Crime at Enron," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 980-996, August.
    26. Hayagreeva Rao & Kumar Sivakumar, 1999. "Institutional Sources of Boundary-Spanning Structures: The Establishment of Investor Relations Departments in the Fortune 500 Industrials," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(1), pages 27-42, February.
    27. J. Adam Cobb, 2015. "Risky Business: The Decline of Defined Benefit Pensions and Firms’ Shifting of Risk," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(5), pages 1332-1350, October.
    28. Libby, R & Tan, HT, 1999. "Analysts' reactions to warnings of negative earnings surprises," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 415-435.
    29. James D. Westphal & David L. Deephouse, 2011. "Avoiding Bad Press: Interpersonal Influence in Relations Between CEOs and Journalists and the Consequences for Press Reporting About Firms and Their Leadership," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(4), pages 1061-1086, August.
    30. Philip H. Birnbaum, 1985. "Political strategies of regulated organizations as functions of context and fear," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 135-150, April.
    31. Johannes M. Pennings & Filippo Carlo Wezel, 2010. "Faraway, Yet So Close: Organizations in Demographic Flux," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(2), pages 451-468, April.
    32. Yezegel, Ari, 2015. "Why do analysts revise their stock recommendations after earnings announcements?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 163-181.
    33. Greta Hsu, 2006. "Evaluative schemas and the attention of critics in the US film industry," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 15(3), pages 467-496, June.
    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. Stefano Cabras & J. D. Tena, 2023. "Implicit institutional incentives and individual decisions: Causal inference with deep learning models," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(6), pages 3739-3754, September.

    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. Kristian D. Allee & Theodore E. Christensen & Bryan S. Graden & Kenneth J. Merkley, 2021. "The Genesis of Voluntary Disclosure: An Analysis of Firms’ First Earnings Guidance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(3), pages 1914-1938, March.
    2. Elaine Ying Wang & Hun‐Tong Tan, 2013. "The Effects of Guidance Frequency and Guidance Goal on Managerial Decisions," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 673-700, June.
    3. David Veenman & Patrick Verwijmeren, 2022. "The Earnings Expectations Game and the Dispersion Anomaly," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 3129-3149, April.
    4. Seo, Hojun, 2021. "Peer effects in corporate disclosure decisions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1).
    5. Stephen A. Hillegeist & James P. Kavourakis & Matthew Pinnuck, 2023. "The association between quarter length, forecast errors, and firms’ voluntary disclosures," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(2), pages 1885-1918, June.
    6. Kannan, Yezen & Khallaf, Ashraf & Gleason, Kimberly & Bostan, Ibrahim, 2023. "The relationship between R&D intensity, conservatism, and management earnings forecast issuance," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    7. Bozanic, Zahn & Roulstone, Darren T. & Van Buskirk, Andrew, 2018. "Management earnings forecasts and other forward-looking statements," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 1-20.
    8. Billings, Mary Brooke & Jennings, Robert & Lev, Baruch, 2015. "On guidance and volatility," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 161-180.
    9. Karthik Balakrishnan & Mary Brooke Billings & Bryan Kelly & Alexander Ljungqvist, 2014. "Shaping Liquidity: On the Causal Effects of Voluntary Disclosure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(5), pages 2237-2278, October.
    10. Cohen, Lee Jeremy & Marcus, Alan J. & Rezaee, Zabihollah & Tehranian, Hassan, 2018. "Waiting for guidance: Disclosure noise, verification delay, and the value-relevance of good-news versus bad-news management earnings forecasts," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 79-99.
    11. Koch, Adam S. & Lefanowicz, Craig E. & Robinson, John R., 2012. "The effect of quarterly earnings guidance on share values in corporate acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 1269-1285.
    12. Yongtae Kim & Lixin (Nancy) Su & Xindong (Kevin) Zhu, 2017. "Does the cessation of quarterly earnings guidance reduce investors’ short-termism?," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 715-752, June.
    13. Jason V. Chen & Itay Kama & Reuven Lehavy, 2019. "A contextual analysis of the impact of managerial expectations on asymmetric cost behavior," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 665-693, June.
    14. Mehdi Beyhaghi & Pooyan Khashabi & Ali Mohammadi, 2023. "Pre-grant Patent Disclosure and Analyst Forecast Accuracy," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(5), pages 3140-3155, May.
    15. Kross, William J. & Ro, Byung T. & Suk, Inho, 2011. "Consistency in meeting or beating earnings expectations and management earnings forecasts," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1-2), pages 37-57, February.
    16. Yangyang Chen & Jeffrey Ng & Xin Yang, 2021. "Talk Less, Learn More: Strategic Disclosure in Response to Managerial Learning from the Options Market," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(5), pages 1609-1649, December.
    17. Jaehong Lee & Eunjoo Cho & Jong Sung Park, 2019. "Towards a More Transparent Disclosure for Corporate Sustainability: Focusing on the Regulation of Unfaithful Disclosure Designation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-26, November.
    18. Ramnath, Sundaresh & Rock, Steve & Shane, Philip, 2008. "The financial analyst forecasting literature: A taxonomy with suggestions for further research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 34-75.
    19. Tang, Michael & Zarowin, Paul & Zhang, Li, 2015. "How do analysts interpret management range forecasts?," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 48-66.
    20. Agapova, Anna & Madura, Jeff, 2016. "Market uncertainty and earnings guidance," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 97-111.

    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:inm:ororsc:v:32:y:2021:i:3:p:544-567. 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: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    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.