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This paper investigates how past performance changes, prior CEO replacements and changes in the chairperson impact CEO turnover in public and large private businesses.

We analyze 1,679 CEO replacements documented in a sample of 1,493 Spanish public and private firms during 1998–2004 by computing dynamic binary choice models that control for endogeneity in CEO turnovers.

The results reveal that different performance horizons (short- and long-term) explain the dissimilar rate of CEO turnover between public and private firms. Private firms exercise monitoring patience and path dependency characterizes the evaluation of CEOs, while public companies' short-termism leads to higher CEO turnover rates as a reaction to poor short-term economic results, and alternative controls—ownership and changes in the chairperson—improve the monitoring of management.

Our results show the importance of controlling for path dependency to examine more accurately top executives' performance. The findings confirm that exposure to market controls affects the functioning of internal controls in evaluating CEOs and shows a short-term performance horizon that could be behind the recent moves of public firms going private or restraining shareholders' power.

This paper develops and proposes a game theory model that illustrates the effect of privatization on firm competitiveness using cases from the automotive industry. We first provide the mathematical derivation of the model for a competitive industry then address the special case of a duopoly. We chose the automotive industry as it is a relevant illustration of global competitive pressures pushing firms to develop strategic alliances or consolidate. The model shows that privatization has (1) a positive effect on firm performance given that managerial incentives are well defined, and (2) facilitates the firmʼs entry into strategic alliances. We then turn to discuss Renaultʼs empirically observed success factors in the European - and gradually global - markets over the last three decades despite the economic cycles.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of real earnings management by private and public firms in a unique institutional setting, which is the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The paper also compares the level of real earnings management between public and private firms in the GCC area.

The GCC area is a unique setting to investigate the use of real earnings management because of the low enforcement of reporting standards and supervisory rules, lack of sophisticated financial analysis, specialized media tools and high concentration of capital ownership. The authors use different models of real earnings management proposed by Roychowdhury, 2006, cash flow management, productions cost management and discretionary expenses management to examine the use of real earnings management.

The paper documents evidence consistent with private and public firms using real earnings management to influence their earnings figures. The paper also shows that the level of real earnings management is higher for private firms compared to public firms when cash flow management and discretionary expenses management models are used. The production cost model results show evidence consistent with public firms only engaging in real earnings management through production cost reduction.

The results of this study might not be applicable to other emerging markets.

The findings of this study should promote a general understanding of firms’ behavior in unique environment such as GCC countries. Regulators in the GCC region should be aware that real earnings management techniques have been used by firms and that extra caution is required when auditing or analyzing the financial information of private and public firms in the GCC market.

This paper contributes to the literature in many aspects. First, it provides additional evidence on the use of earnings management in unique market contexts outside the USA and Europe. The GCC markets share many common characteristics that make them interesting settings to be investigated. Second, this paper adds more evidence on the use of earnings management between public and private firms. In this regard, the paper adds additional evidence in the discussions proposed by Ball and Shivakumar (2005) and Givoly et al. (2010) who use two competing perspectives to investigate earnings quality in public and private firms: the demand hypothesis and the opportunistic behavior hypothesis.

This paper aims to investigate the motivations behind the publication of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, and particularly the effect of information asymmetry between firms and their owners.

A natural experiment contrasting the CSR reporting of private vs public firms is used to test whether the degree of information asymmetry is a significant factor in the decision to publish CSR reports. Using a hand-collected sample of the 239 largest US private companies matched with publicly-traded firms, the effect of these inherently different information environments on CSR reporting is tested through logistic regression. Factors suggested by stakeholder and legitimacy theories are tested for their differential impact on private vs public firms’ decisions to publish a CSR report.

Results indicate that private firms are less likely to publish a CSR report than similar public firms. Public firms also follow Global Reporting Initiative guidelines more frequently, consistent with signaling report quality to dispersed investors. A subsample of private companies facing greater information asymmetry is found to be similar to public firms in their reporting behavior, reinforcing the link between information asymmetry and CSR disclosure. Further analysis suggests that non-owner stakeholders play an important role in private companies’ CSR reporting decisions.

In addition to accounting and governance scholars, the findings should interest private firm managers preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), as the evidence suggests that CSR reporting is used to communicate information to dispersed investors. The insight into reporting motivations should be useful to accountants engaged in CSR consultation and assurance.

With the growing attention paid to the CSR performance of firms, demonstrated by the growth in socially responsible investing, the study provides evidence that effective communication of CSR information to investors may play a key role in CSR-engaged firms’ disclosure strategies.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to analyze the CSR reporting decisions of a large sample of publicly-traded and privately-held firms. The results add to our understanding of what motivates firms to publish CSR reports, highlighting the importance of information asymmetry between the firm and its owners.

This study provides a large sample comparison of research and development (R&D) spending intensity in private and public firms and the extent to which these firms' unique characteristics affect their R&D spending rate.

The study compares both private and public data from UK firms for the period 2006–2016, generating a total matched 232,029 firm-year observations, and applies a probability model technique to our large panel datasets.

The authors uncover that private firms show lower R&D spending intensity compared to their public counterparts. The authors evidence also shows that privately owned firms in the technological (non-technological) sector display higher (lower) probability of R&D spending intensity. Compared with public firms, the authors further observe that the intensity of private firms' R&D spending increases with higher internal cash flow, leverage and industry information quality. The authors results remain robust to alternative econometric models.

Despite the findings of this study, the authors would like to point out that the use of a single country's data limits the generalisability of our findings. Thus, future studies may also consider extending this study across multiple countries.

A key implication of our study is that private firms are more likely to finance R&D intensity from the internally generated cash flow compared to the public ones. This stems from the fact that private firms are more likely to experience higher costs in raising external finance for innovative activities than public firms. Thus, easy access to funding for private firms is vital for enhancing R&D activities of the private firms.

By combining both private and public firms' datasets, the authors are able to provide new evidence to suggest that the intensity of private firms' R&D spending is dependent on internal cash flow, leverage and the industry information level. In fact, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores these relationships.

The specific purpose of this study is to understand how firm size and public/private affiliation (employment status) affect voluntary disclosure decisions concerning quantitatively immaterial nonfinancial information. Although the prior disclosure literature is large and has considered a variety of factors including size and to a lesser degree employment status, this study offers a new perspective by considering both factors in the context of qualitative materiality.

This paper presents 136 manager participants with 24 cues representing nonfinancial, realistic business events and solicits their disclosure judgments. The cues are adapted from Pinsker et al. and contain information that does not meet widely-accepted quantitative thresholds for disclosure (e.g. 5 percent of net income), yet were identified by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as more likely to be material. This paper uses a median split of total assets and total revenues to determine “large” and “small” firms. Managers' judgments are measured in an own-firm setting (The context is their current employer, which can be public or private.).

This paper finds that disclosure is positively linked to firm size, but this paper do not find an employer status effect. Additional testing reveals that private firm managers are sensitive to SEC oversight and other external, competitive pressures, suggesting that they face mimetic pressures to behave like their public firm counterparts. In sum, their findings contribute significantly to the disclosure, strategic management, institutional theory and judgment-and-decision-making (JDM) literatures.

Although there is a vast literature on public firm managers' voluntary disclosure behavior (mostly involving large firms), there is little research regarding the voluntary disclosure behavior of small or large private firm managers involving nonfinancial information.

This study aims to examine whether debt financing creates incentives for private firms to engage in earnings management via classification shifting. Especially, the authors examine whether debt-induced financial reporting incentives differ depending on the type of debt (i.e. public bonds versus private loans) and whether such incentives are influenced by the characteristics of external auditors (i.e. initial audits and auditor size).

The study uses data on 93,427 Korean private firms from 2001 to 2016. Classification shifting is measured by the positive correlation between non-core expenses and unexpected core earnings estimated with ordinary least squares.

The empirical analyses reveal that private firms engage in classification shifting as do public firms. Importantly, classification shifting is observed only in private firms that have outstanding debt, but not in private firms without debt. Among debt-financing private firms, classification shifting is more prevalent for firms that issue public debt than for firms that only use private debt. In addition, classification shifting of debt-financing private firms is more successful when they are audited by new auditors that are one of the non-Big 4 firms.

The study provides evidence of classification shifting in private firms, which is novel to the literature. However, the inferences in the study depend on the validity of the model for detecting classification shifting.

This study helps lenders enhance their understanding on the financial reporting behaviors of borrowing firms. The results in this study suggest that lenders should be cautious in using core earnings for their investment decisions.

This study contributes to the literature by providing novel evidence of classification shifting in private firms. In addition, the authors contribute to the literature on debt-induced incentives for financial reporting.

Prior studies suggest that, in an industry in which several public firms operate (i.e. greater public firm presence), uncertainty about business operations within the industry is reduced due to greater analyst coverage and quality of information disclosure. In this study, the authors examine how UK private firms respond to investment opportunities in fixed intangible assets (FIAs) in an environment characterised by greater public firm presence (PFP).

Using data from 61,278 (1,358) private (public) UK firms operating in ten sectors spanning from 2006 to 2016, the authors conduct this analysis by using panel econometric techniques.

The authors observe that private firms are more responsive to their FIA investment opportunities when they operate in industries with more PFP. Also, the authors find that firms in industries with better information quality use more debt and have longer debt maturity security but less internal cash flow. Overall, the findings indicate that PFP generates positive externalities for private firms by lessening industry uncertainty and enhancing more efficient FIA investment. The results are robust to endogeneity concerns.

A key limitation of the study is that it focuses on a single country (the UK) and therefore there is a likelihood that the results found are specific to this setting but not others, particularly developing and emerging economies. Thus, future studies could explore these ideas from the viewpoint of multiple countries.

Overall, the study demonstrates the importance of information disclosure in driving investment decisions of firms.

While this paper builds on the information disclosure and corporate investment literature, it is one of the first attempts, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to explore how private UK firms respond to investment in FIAs in an environment characterised by greater PFP.

This chapter focuses on public research as one possible external source of knowledge available for private companies seeking scientific support in relation to product development projects, and analyses inter-organizational relations between public research institutions and innovative firms including enabling conditions for effective knowledge creation in such public-private interactions. Two case studies of product development projects based on sensor technology are used to illuminate how innovation is carried out in such interactions. The chapter concludes with extracting crucial features for successful public-private collaboration on knowledge creation and innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to describe, illustrate and provide a deeper understanding of team composition and labor allocation in audit teams by quantifying the exact value of resources at different levels of the audit production. Audit teams have been considered as a black box in audit research. Therefore, this paper reports descriptive statistics on (levels and proportions of) hours and costs allocated to auditor ranks (and the number and value, i.e. billing rates, of auditors for different ranks and the entire team) to shed new light on audit teams.

This study uses a proprietary data set containing disaggregated information on hours, costs and billing rates for each team member in each of 908 audit engagements. The data are provided by a Swedish Big 4 audit firm. The study uses a purely descriptive approach and categorizes auditors into seven ranks. As size and the publicly listed status are crucial determinants of audit production, the paper splits engagements in public and private companies and reports statistics for size quartiles of both public and private clients.

The paper provides descriptive statistics for (1) client size, (2) audit team members, (3) audit hours, (4) audit costs, (5) proportion of audit hours, (6) proportion of audit costs, (7) billing rates and (8) variation of billing rates. Results show that compared to private clients, the audit firm allocates higher effort from auditors in higher ranks and lower effort from auditors in lower ranks to public clients. Another finding is that allocation varies with client size for private clients, but less so for public clients.

In an area with sparse literature, this descriptive study serves as a first step to improve our understanding and guide future research. It provides concrete support for previously known theory.