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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.

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 study aims to investigate whether the characteristics of the chief financial officer (CFO) have an impact on the intensity of the corporate research and development (R&D) investment.

Based on hand-collected data for the CFOs of a sample of the largest European listed companies for the period 2013–2016, this study uses regression analyses to test empirically the association of CFO education, CFO gender and CFO age with R&D investment intensity.

The presence of female CFOs, CFOs with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) or Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree and older CFOs is positively associated with the intensity of R&D investment.

This study relies on some observable characteristics of CFOs and focuses on large listed companies.

The results of this study may help investors, stakeholders and practitioners to understand better which type of CFO characteristics are more likely to result in higher firm-level R&D investment intensity.

This study offers the first insights into the impact of CFOs, as the most prominent C-suite executives, on the level of corporate investments in R&D activity.

This research should help determine whether development should focus on individual firms or will raising the national development level act like a rising tide and raise the performance of all corporations.

The comparative data used in this study come from 150 Australian (ASX200 index listed) firms and 150 Sri Lankan (Colombo Stock Exchange listed) firms. The research questions are answered via a quantitative research design that uses primary and secondary data.

The findings demonstrate that capital budgeting practices are more influenced by contingency features and sophistication in Australia and Sri Lanka. Also, Australian firms tend to use capital budget models with good-to-strong predictive power (except for ROE) and Sri Lankan firms tend to use capital-budget models with fair-to-poor predictive power. Further, the analysis of Australian firms yielded much stronger and more statistically significant results than the analysis of Sri Lankan firms.

In complex real-world situations, reconciling the outputs of a multifaceted approach to capital budgeting methods is more likely to give the depth and width of input needed to achieve an optimal capital investment plan.

The results of this study can provide rich information for stakeholders about new findings in capital budgeting (CB) practices and their contributions to firm performance in a comparative perspective.

This paper develops and tests a descriptive model of management accounting system choice through an empirical analysis of the adoption of innovative cost accounting systems in not-for-profit hospitals. The logistic regression analysis indicates that management accounting system design is impacted by organi zational objectives, technological complexity, and other features of the organizational control system. Descriptive statistics indicate limited use of management accounting techniques common in manufacturing firms, such as standard costing and variance analysis. A cross-lagged model suggests that implementation of an innovative management accounting system may be causally linked to decreasing operating costs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current trends of capital budgeting practices (analysis techniques, discount rate estimations and risk assessment methods) among Pakistani listed firms and analyze the responses conditional on firms’ demographics and executive characteristics.

An online questionnaire was sent via e-mail to top 200 non-financial firms (in terms of market capitalization) listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange.

With a response rate of 35 percent, it is concluded that the theory–practice gap is low as Pakistani listed firms are using discounted cash flow methods of capital budgeting and preferring net present value over internal rate of return. Similarly, weighted average cost of capital is estimated using target value weights, and capital asset pricing model (with extra risk factors) is used to determine the cost of equity capital. For risk assessment, sensitivity analysis and scenario analysis are the dominant approaches; however despite the theoretical superiority, the use of real options is very low. Overall, investment decision responses significantly differ across firm’s demographics and executive characteristics.

Pakistani business schools need to address the low usage of advanced methods such as modified internal rate of return and real options among Pakistani listed firms.

This is the first comprehensive study on the topic in Pakistan and have highlighted the areas of capital budgeting where Pakistani firms’ practices deviates from finance theory.

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.

This paper examines how “strategic” chief financial officers (CFOs) with an elite MBA (i.e. elite CFOs) influence (1) stock market reaction to CFO hiring announcements (ex ante measure) and (2) post-hiring firm performance (ex-post measure).

This paper utilizes a comprehensive, proprietary database with information about the educational qualifications and prior professional experience of 1,340 CFOs hired during the period 1994–2014. For each CFO, the authors hand-collected data on the CFO's prior experience as well as CFO's educational profile. The authors also identified the date of CFO hiring from financial press articles. To evaluate performance, the authors consider two different, yet complementary performance measures: (1) the stock market reaction, a priori measure and (2) a traditional measure of performance, which is a post-facto metric related to firm performance.

The results show that hiring CFOs with scarce and strategic human capital elicits a positive market response and leads to significant improvement in firm performance. Further, firms with greater managerial discretion benefit more from hiring elite CFOs. The results hold after controlling for chief executive officer (CEO), CFO, top managment team (TMT), and board characteristics.

This study shows converging and mutually consistent results about what specific types of CFO human capital create firm value and, more importantly, show that such value-creation is only in the case of small firms and high growth firms. The study also advances the stream of literature that contrasts the relative benefits of specialist versus generalist qualifications.

This study aims to examine the relationship between the presence of ex-auditor chief executive officers (CEOs) and ex-auditor chief financial officers (CFOs) with the company's investment efficiency decisions.

The authors use non-financial Indonesian listed firms, and the authors obtain 2,763 firm-year observations of ex-auditor CEOs and 2,708 firm-year observations of ex-auditor CFOs from 2010–2019.

The results show that ex-auditor CEOs tend to make efficient investment decisions, while ex-auditor CFOs do not. However, when a company has a CEO and a CFO who are both former auditors, there is a significantly stronger positive relationship with investment efficiency. These results indicate that working experience as an auditor can optimally facilitate the decision regarding investment level. Moreover, the results suggest that the CEO, as top management, has more influence in providing the company's final investment decisions, whereas the CFO plays a role in providing investment recommendations to the CEO. The results of this study are consistent with the use of alternative measurements and the robustness test of Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM).

The results of this study can contribute as material for consideration by company management in selecting company organs with an auditor background to secure efficient investment.

This study specifically examines the experience, values, and particular characteristics of top management with an auditor background on the company's strategic decisions. This study is also based on the phenomenon that the number of ex-auditor CEOs and CFOs in Indonesia tends to increase every year.

This study examines how the strong emphasis placed on the purposes of budgeting, referring to a comprehensive focus on budgeting, is related to top managers' education and tenure while controlling for their functional positions in their respective firms and ages, as well as several company-specific predictors (information quality, firm size, information technology, importance of profit and strategy).

Survey data were collected from senior managers of large manufacturing firms in Finland and Sweden.

The results suggest that academic business education is positively associated with a comprehensive focus on budgeting, but tenure as well as functional position in the company (Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or not) and age are not. Overall, the company-specific control variables in general and information quality in particular are shown to have greater explanatory power than the top management characteristics analyzed.

This study identifies several empirically supported factors that seem to contribute to a comprehensive focus on budgeting. The effects of information quality, business education, the importance of profit and firm size could be considered in future research.

Academic business education matters more than the other top management characteristics analyzed. If organizations want to make comprehensive use of budgets, they should employ business graduates and be mindful of company-specific variables.

This study is the first to address a comprehensive focus on budgeting and some of its determinants. Future research could investigate a broader set of such determinants in different contexts.