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The purpose of this paper is to examine motives for hiring a non‐family Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in family firms. The authors explore the perceptions of family firm owners towards external managers by analyzing how their goals relate to the employment of a non‐family CFO.

This study is based on a survey of 195 small‐ and medium‐sized privately‐held German family firms. It investigates the relationship between goals of the family and the employment of a non‐family CFO.

Family firm owners decide against an external CFO when their goal of independence and control is high. Furthermore, they do not seem to trust external managers to act in accordance with their goal of enterprise value growth. However, they seem to realize that non‐family CFOs are likely to decrease financial risk through the provision of additional capabilities.

The findings are relevant to understand the relationship between external managers and family firm owners. By employing a non‐family CFO, family firm owners give away part of the control, but they can also gain additional valuable input and potentially lower their financial risk. They should however put effort into setting up appropriate incentive structures for the manager.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between a chief finance officer's (CFO's) financial expertise and corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The paper's sample consists of firms from the 2005 S&P 500 Index. Data on CSR come from Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini (KLD), Inc. Data on CFO financial expertise were had collected. Consistent with prior research, experience (tenure), education (masters of business administration degree), and professional experience (certified public accountant designation) are used to measure the CFO's financial expertise.

Using a sample of S&P 500 firms from 2005, it is found that CFO experience (measured by tenure) is positively related to CSR at a significant level. In addition, the results indicate that CSR activities are not related to the CFO's education (measured as a Master's of Business Administration degree) or accounting expertise (measured as certified public accountant designation). The findings suggest that CFOs with more experience engage in more CSR activities than CFOs with less experience.

This study is valuable for several reasons: First, the study contributes to both the CSR literature and the CFO financial expertise literature by delivering new evidence on the link between CFO financial expertise and corporate social responsibility. Second, the study provides useful information to boards of directors, corporations and investors on certain CFO characteristics associated with effective CSR. Third, the study provides empirical evidence to support the suggested shift in the CFO's role from accountant to co‐driver of a firm's long‐term strategy.

Recent reports suggest that employees have concerns about their company’s leadership and ethical environment. Despite more stringent regulations, top executives are continuing to pursue aggressive financial reporting practices by managing earnings. In this study, the authors find that individuals have more significant concerns about the workplace environment when the chief financial officer (CFO) manages earnings that result in personal gain relative to when the CFO manages earnings that benefit other stakeholders (i.e., employees and investors). Further, the authors show that this negative effect of earnings management for personal gain on workplace environment quality becomes more prominent when the control environment is weak and when the CFO possesses accounting expertise. The authors add to the body of academic knowledge on financial reporting, ethical leadership, and the workplace environment. Business practitioners can use our study to inform their decisions, particularly those about financial reporting and managing the workplace environment.

This study aims to develop a conceptual framework for the role of chief financial officer (CFO) in an ever-changing environment. As previous research focused on responding to specific crises, there have been theoretical and practical gaps in the role of CFO. The study's goal is to fill a critical gap by developing a comprehensive and integrated set of roles to assist the CFO in a constantly changing environment.

Using a grounded theory approach, semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted with 21 CFOs from various industries in Thailand, including foreign multinational corporations and domestic companies with international operations. CFOs were asked how they frame their roles in the face of an ever-changing environment and how they prepare for the future.

The iCFO model is developed, which identifies the critical “core” roles of the CFO in securing the business foundation, as well as the “future opportunities” roles that function as growth engines for long-term business strength. The research delves into the importance of integrity, ethical mindset and corporate governance in the role of the CFO. The iCFO model is designed to help guide future research and provide practical applications for CFOs in both domestic and international contexts. The term “core” refers to the CFO’s primary responsibilities, which include driving profitability, managing risks and optimizing business performance. The “future opportunities” component focuses on the roles that CFOs can play in strengthening the future of business by optimizing investment efficiency, driving digital transformation and being the CEO’s business partner. The findings also emphasized “integrity,” which must encompass all decisions, actions or recommendations made by the CFO.

The study offers unique perspectives on an emerging economy, providing new insights. Through interviews with 21 CFOs, it contributes empirical evidence on the development of roles in accounting and finance, emphasizing good governance practices. The findings highlight the integrated role of the CFO and their self-reflection on their value within the company. Significantly, the study's implications are relevant and applicable to a global audience, particularly in developing economies that prioritize growth. Future studies could incorporate integrated thinking into the iCFO model to address social, environmental and economic factors, making it more universally relevant. Additionally, exploring the adoption of the chief value officer context in developing markets could enable CFOs to expand their focus beyond financial metrics, embracing a comprehensive approach to value creation. By integrating these concepts into the iCFO model, CFOs can effectively drive sustainable and impactful business outcomes on a global scale.

This study aims to examine the relationship between the educational background of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) from reputable universities and financial reporting quality (FRQ). Educational background is divided into two categories: an undergraduate degree from a reputable university and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from a reputable university.

This study uses data from all companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2019, except for financial companies, and obtains 2,583 research samples. The least-squares regression analysis model was used in this study.

This study finds that the educational background of CFOs with a bachelor’s degree and CFOs with an MBA from reputable universities has a positive and significant relationship with FRQ. This study also performs an additional analysis with high-low growth and high-low tech and robustness testing with coarsened exact matching method and Heckman to corroborate the results.

This study provides a theoretical contribution to the literature on the relationship between CFOs’ educational background and FRQ in Indonesia. It is also expected to contribute to the implementation of company policies, management and educational institutions in Indonesia.

This study provides a novel measurement of CFO reputation, measured using the ranking of CFO alumni from reputable universities and its association with FRQ.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of Australian Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) as board insiders on firm performance and earnings quality with reference to agency theory and theory of friendly board.

The ordinary least square, two-stage least-squares and propensity score matching regressions are performed with various proxies for firm performance and accruals quality.

Firms with CFOs as board insiders experience significantly lower firm performance and earnings quality. In firms with powerful CEOs, the negative impact of CFO board membership on earnings quality is further magnified. Additionally, the negative impact of CFO board membership on firm values and earnings quality is only present in firms with bigger boards or firms with less outside directors. The findings are consistent with the agency perspective and in sharp contrast to the US market.

This is the first Australian study to examine the impact of CFO board membership on firm performance and earnings quality. The findings suggest that the monitoring of executives is best done by a small or independent board and that the insider board membership should be optimised.

The authors examine whether the stronger information content of chief financial officer (CFO) insider trading relative to that of chief executive officers (CEOs) results from a different willingness to exploit the information asymmetry that exists between executives and outside shareholders (scrutiny hypothesis) or from differing financial acumen between CFOs and CEOs (financial acumen hypothesis). The authors consider the information content of equity purchases for CEOs and CFOs. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors examine purchase-based insider trading portfolio returns before and after the implementation of SOX in firms with high versus low regulation, for routine and opportunistic managers, and in samples of CEOs with prior CFO experience.

The authors provide evidence that SOX affected executives differently and provide support for the scrutiny hypothesis. CFO-based portfolios remain the most profitable post-SOX, but the magnitude of returns has fallen in absolute and relative terms compared to returns for CEOs. Superior financial acumen of CFOs does not appear to be supported. CEO purchase trade returns appear to be lower than CFO returns because CEOs face greater visibility and scrutiny and thus limit their own trading aggressiveness.

This research contributes to the literature in explaining why CFOs best CEOs in their insider trading purchases and documents that in the post-SOX period, CFO insider trading superiority disappears.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between the financial expertise of the chief financial officer (CFO) and concerns about corporate governance.

Consistent with prior research, the authors used four variables, including certified public accountant (CPA) certification, Master of Business Administration degree, age of CFO and length of CFO tenure, to measure CFO’s financial expertise. The authors hypothesize a negative association between CFO expertise and concerns about corporate governance.

Regression analysis revealed that the CPA certification is negatively associated with governance concerns at a significant level. The results suggest that stakeholders show less concerns about a company’s corporate governance mechanism when the CFO has a CPA certification. In particular, the results support the recommendation by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants that a CFO of a public firm should have a CPA certification.

The study is important in the following ways. First, the study delivers new evidence on the link between CFO financial expertise and corporate governance. This contributes to the CFO financial expertise literature and the corporate governance literature. Second, according to Standard and Poor’s, equity index investing has grown more popular over the past 30 years. The study delivers useful information to index investors who invest in S & P SmallCap 600 Index. Third, regulators have put a large amount of resources to discover ways to strengthen firms’ corporate governance. Thus, the results should be of interest to policy makers who design and implement guidelines on corporate governance mechanisms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine chief financial officer (CFO) qualification improvement associated with restatements and restatement characteristics (restatement materiality). The study is motivated by recent high-profile financial scandals and increasing instances of restatements which focus public attention on the role of CFOs in maintaining the integrity and quality of corporate financial reporting.

The study employs data composed of 80 restating firms matched with 80 non-restating firms with hand-collected CFO turnover information in the periods of 2003-2010. The research questions are tested in the logistic regression models.

The results provide some support that restating firms are more likely to hire new CFOs with greater accounting knowledge and overall CFO qualification (both accounting knowledge and CFO work experience) than non-restating firms. Furthermore, the authors also find that the number of restating years has a positive effect on CFO qualification improvement.

Although the authors fail to find strong evidence for the hypotheses (perhaps due to the small sample size) the authors provide the first evidence on the relation between CFO qualification improvement and restatement. Further research can examine the relation in the pre-SOX period, and investigate whether any of the firms experiencing CFO turnover have experienced any financial statement restatements in subsequent years.

The results extend the understanding of companies’ strategies for regaining reporting credibility in the wake of restatements. Restatements of erroneous accounting numbers (primarily earnings) have led to significant losses for investors, contributed to a series of corporate governance reforms and legislative changes including SOX 2002, and prompted efforts to identify the remedies restating firms take to improve reporting quality and restore credibility.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between characteristics of chief financial officers (CFOs) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system adoption. Following upper echelons theory, the authors theorize that CFO age, education, tenure and recruitment influence ERP system adoption, and that this relationship is moderated by the CFO being responsible for firm-wide information technology (IT) functions.

The empirical analysis is based on a survey of 296 large and medium-sized Austrian firms. Logistic regression analyses were used to test the association between CFO characteristics and ERP system adoption.

The authors find that firms with externally recruited CFOs have adopted ERP systems significantly more often than firms with internally promoted CFOs. Surprisingly, the results indicate that firms with less educated CFOs more often adopted an ERP system, and that the relationship between CFO characteristics and ERP system adoption is not moderated by the CFO being responsible for IT.

This paper adds to the literature by corroborating case-based evidence that CFOs and their characteristics influence ERP system adoption. Extending previous research which indicates that CFO characteristics influence accounting practices, the authors show that CFO characteristics also influence technological innovation such as the adoption of ERP systems. Future research on technological innovation may therefore pay closer attention to the influence of CFOs.

This paper is the first to quantitatively test the influence of CFO characteristics on ERP system adoption.