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I seek to identify whether cash flow management can affect the performance and risk of the Greek listed companies.

This study examines the relationship of cash flow management with performance and risk, using a sample of 80 non-financial companies listed in the Athens Exchange. The study covers the period 2018–2022, and panel data analysis is applied. Both financial performance and stock return are taken into consideration, while risk concerns the volatility of the companies’ share prices. The various explanatory variables used include the net cash flow, free cash flow, cash conversion cycle days, cash flow from operating activities, cash flow from investing activities, cash flow from financing activities, inventory days, customer days and supplier days.

The empirical results provide evidence of a positive relationship between financial performance and net cash flow and free cash flow. In addition, operating cash flow is positively related to financial performance. The opposite is the case for investing and financing cash flow. Finally, some evidence of a negative relationship between financial performance and inventory and customer days is provided too. On the other hand, stock return and risk are not related to the cash flow management variables at all.

To the best of my knowledge, this is one of the few studies to examine the relationship of cash flow management with performance and risk, using data from the Greek stock market. The results can form an effective selection tool for investors seeking Greek companies with the highest financial performance potential, which may reward them with higher dividends.

Recent studies on the securities market’s differential pricing of earnings components have shown that cash flow from operations is more highly valued than total accruals and that moderate cash flow from operations has higher valuation than extreme total accruals. An interesting question that follows is whether these findings hold regarding the differential valuations of cash flow and current accruals. This study aims to extend prior research by addressing this issue in two ways. First, the authors examine the incremental information content of cash flow from operations beyond working capital from operations. Second, the authors assess the effect of extreme working capital from operations on the incremental information content of cash flow from operations. This study aims to extend prior research by addressing this issue in two ways.

This study adopts market-based accounting research to test its hypotheses and to achieve its objectives. Specifically, this study uses statistical associations between accounting data and stock returns to examine the incremental information content (value relevance) of cash flow and working capital from operations and the effect of extreme working capital from operations on the incremental information content of cash flow.

The results show that cash flow from operations is not more highly valued than current accruals (both being valued equivalently). However, moderate cash flow from operations has higher valuation than extreme current accruals (each is valued differently). Overall, these research findings indicate that cash flow becomes more important for valuation as accruals get “extreme”.

As accruals are unlikely to persist to be permanent across the years, these results can be interpreted as indicating that cash flow and accruals information are used jointly by investors, with one being more important than the other depending on the relative “extremeness” of each. Therefore, both are of value to the investor and both should be reported.

The paper contributes to the UK research on determining the preferred level of disaggregation of earnings components, i.e. operating cash flow, current accruals and non-current accruals. This would help investors to improve their investment and credit decisions.

Previous studies have postulated that an advance payment system (APS) positively impacts the contractor's working capital and is paramount to ensuring an efficient and effective project cash flow process. However, scant research has been undertaken to empirically establish the cash flow performance and domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance.

The epistemological design adopted a positivist philosophical stance augmented by deductive reasoning to explore the phenomena under investigation. Primary quantitative data were collected from 504 Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) registered contractors (within the grade bandings 1–9) in South Africa. A five-point Likert scale was utilised, and subsequent data accrued were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Emergent findings reveal that the mandatory use of an APS does not guarantee a positive project cash flow, an improvement in organisational performance or an improvement in project performance.

The ensuing discussion reveals the contributory influence of APS on positive cash flow and organisational performance, although APS implementation alone will not achieve these objectives. Practically, the research accentuates the need for various measures to be concurrently adopted (including APS) towards ensuring a positive project cash flow and improved organisational and project performance.

There is limited empirical research on cash flow performance and the domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance in South Africa, nor indeed, the wider geographical location of Africa as a continent. This study addresses this gap in the prevailing body of knowledge.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between uncertainty and corporate cash holdings with the moderating role of political connections.

We employ fixed effects estimation on a panel dataset of 669 Vietnamese listed firms over the 2010–2020 period, with one- and two-way standard error clustering. We conduct various robustness tests, including two-stage least squares/instrumental variable and generalized method of moments regressions, alternative cash holding measure, and additional controls for macroeconomic conditions and ownership types.

The effect of uncertainty on cash holdings is weakened for firms with political connections relative to those without the connections. Although general firms depend on cash flows to adjust their cash holding behavior when uncertainty increases, our findings suggest that politically connected firms do not rely on internal cash flows to accumulate cash when confronted high uncertainty.

Our findings on the role of political connections in moderating the relationship between cash holding and economic policy uncertainty have practical implications for policymaking. Since political connections serve as a buffer for a firm’s liquidity, firms may want to seek those connections, which can, in turn, lead to increasing informal costs and unfair business environment.

This is the first study investigating the role of political connections to the nexus of cash, cash flow and uncertainty, providing novel evidence regarding the less dependence on internal cash flows to save cash by politically connected firms. Second, the paper enriches the literature on the motives of cash holdings by proposing a modified agency view in the context of weak investor protection. Therefore, our findings strengthen the explanation for the positive effect of uncertainty on firms’ cash holdings in emerging markets.

This study proposes a novel measure for management’s horizon (short-termism or myopia vs long-termism or hyperopia) derived from easily obtainable firm-level accounting and stock market performance data. The authors use the measure to explore the impact of managements’ horizon on firms’ investment efficiency.

The authors rely on two commonly used but uncorrelated measures of management performance: accounting performance (return on capital employed, ROCE) and stock market performance (average abnormal return, AAR). The authors combine these measures to develop a multidimensional framework for performance, which classifies firms into four groups: efficient (high accounting and high market performance), poor (low accounting and low market performance), myopic (high accounting and low market performance) and hyperopic (low accounting and high market performance). The authors validate this framework and deploy it to explore the relationship between horizon and firms’ investment efficiency.

In validation tests, the authors show that management myopia (hyperopia) explains firms’ decision to cut (grow) research and development investments. Further, as expected, myopic (hyperopic) firms are associated with significantly more (less) accrual and real earnings management. The empirical tests on the link between horizon and investment efficiency suggest that myopic managers cut new investments while their hyperopic counterparts grow the same. Ultimately, the authors find that myopia (hyperopia) exacerbates(mitigates) the over-investment of free cash flow problem.

The authors introduce a framework for assessing management’s horizon using easily obtainable measures of performance. The framework explains inconsistencies in prior empirical research using different measures of performance (accounting versus market). The authors demonstrate its utility by showing that the measure explains decisions around research and development investment, earnings management and firm investments.

The purpose of this research is to examine Micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Which have limited access to financial resources from financial intermediaries. Thus, resource allocation is a primary concern for them.

This research studies the determinants of cash conversion cycle components and cash flow of MSMEs operating in Ecuador. This study examined a robust sample of 19,680 firms from 2000 to 2020, using the two-step generalized methods of moments to control for endogeneity and multicollinearity of independent variables issues.

The sample was divided into working capital intensive and fixed capital intensive firms. It was found that in every segment (micro-, small- and medium-sized), the majority of firms are working capital intensive and their average return is higher. This implies that small business owners assign the majority of their resources to current assets, which thus far have enabled them to achieve higher profitability.

Research investigated Ecuadorian MSMEs in a dollarized developing environment. Scrutinizing working capital intensive vs fixed capital intensive.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between earnings quality and corporate cash holdings in an emerging economy. Existing literature posits that earnings quality is a result of information asymmetry and firms with lower earnings quality increases cash holdings, to shield the firm from future uncertainties. In this paper, the authors propose a ‘private benefits hypothesis’, which suggests that lower earnings quality is an indicator of opportunism and expropriation of resources in the firm, through tunneling or excessive executive compensations. As a result, firms with lower earnings quality increase cash holdings in their control, to increase their private benefits and to avoid the scrutiny of the external stakeholders. The authors further examine the monitoring role played by institutional investors on cash holdings, with varying degrees of earnings quality.

This study uses an unbalanced panel data sourced from Prowessdx, from 2000 to 2019. The analysis employs 20,231 firm-year observations from 2,421 firms. Earnings quality is calculated following Dechow and Dichev (2002).

Empirical analysis confirms that the firms with higher earnings quality reduce cash. Further, institutional investors reduce the cash holdings in firms with higher earnings quality. Institutional investors effectively reduce the cash only in firms with at least 10% of equity shareholding. The results are robust to alternative measures of earnings quality and endogeneity concerns.

This study diverges from the information asymmetry hypothesis in the existing literature on earnings quality and cash holdings and highlights the underlying private benefits hypothesis, that will impact cash holdings. Next, the 10% institutional shareholding is important in the Indian context as it represents the minimum threshold at which block holders can request extraordinary general meetings (Section 100 of the Companies Act 2013) or the involvement of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) (Section 213 of the Companies Act 2013). This study highlights that unlike in Anglo-Saxon economies, institutional investors or other minority shareholders are empowered by the Companies Act 2013 to play a vital role in corporate governance with a mere 10% equity.

This study compares the motives of holding cash between developed (Australian) and developing (Malaysian) financial markets.

For the period 2006–2020, the t-test, fixed-effect and generalised method of moment (GMM) model have been applied to a sample of 1878 (1,165 Australian and 713 Malaysian) firms.

The empirical results reveal that firms in developed financial markets hold higher cash compared to the developing financial markets. The findings confirm that motives to hold cash differ between developed and developing financial markets. The GMM findings further show that cash holdings (CH) in Australia are higher due to higher ratios of cash flow, research and development (R&D) and return on assets (ROA), and lower due to larger dividend payments. In the Malaysian market, however, cash flows and R&D are ineffectual, ROA falls and dividend payments rise CH.

The study helps managers, practitioners and investors understand that firms' distinct economic, institutional, accounting and financial environments are important. To attain the desired outcomes, they must thus comprehend and consider these considerations while developing suitable liquidity strategies.

To the authors' best knowledge, this is the initial research demonstrating how varied cash motives and their ramifications are in developed and developing financial markets. Therefore, this study identifies the importance that CH motives varied among financial markets and that findings from a particular market cannot be generalised to other markets because of the market and financial structural variations.

This study aims to explore the effect of chief executive officer education on firms’ action timing and acquisition performance in industry merger waves. In addition, this study investigated the moderating influence of CEO duality and firm cash flow on the relationship between education and entry timing.

Following the methodology for determining merger waves in previous studies, the authors identified 16 industry merger waves of Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2019. Multiple linear regression was employed to examine the hypotheses.

The results showed that higher CEO education was associated with early participation in merger waves. CEO duality negatively moderated the education-entry timing relation. The effect of CEO education on entry timing was more pronounced when firms had higher cash flow. Moreover, more educated CEOs materially enhanced acquisition performance in merger waves.

Entry timing in industry merger waves has important implications, as early movers establish competitive advantages and achieve higher acquisition performance. However, the managerial characteristics determining entry timing have not received adequate attention. Meanwhile, studies examining the effect of CEO education on acquisitions are limited. This study explored the effect of CEO education on firms’ entry timing and acquisition performance in merger waves, thereby contributing to the literature on merger waves and managerial characteristics. This study’s findings regarding the moderators of the education-entry timing relation enrich the literature on corporate governance and agency theory.

This study aims to investigate the roles of intellectual capital efficiency and institutional ownership on cash holdings and their speed of adjustment.

Using a sample of 432 firm-year observations of tourism-listed companies, three measures of cash holdings are used as dependent variables and intellectual capital efficiency and institutional ownership as independent variables. The financial data is collected from the S&P Capital IQ database for the period 2015–2020. Two system-generalized methods of moment estimation are used for the robustness checks of the results.

The study provides evidence that an increase in intellectual capital efficiency in tourism firms results in lower cash holdings. The research findings also report that characteristics such as firm size, age and market-to-book value ratio are associated with cash holdings. Furthermore, institutional ownership in these firms did not affect the cash holdings. The results also confirm the existence of a target cash holding level to which the tourism firms attempt to converge. These results are robust to the alternative proxy of cash holding and endogeneity tests.

The study uses intellectual capital efficiency measured by the model proposed by Pulic. Alternative measures of intellectual capital can be included in future studies. Future research can also investigate the impact on cash holdings before and during the pandemic for tourism companies. The study is limited to the impact of institutional ownership; thus, research can be extended to consider other types of ownership.

The findings of this study indicate that tourism companies should take into account the impact of intellectual capital efficiency on their cash holding decisions. The industry uses a specific financial management strategy in light of better efficiency and possibly values the opportunity cost of holding more cash. Additionally, regulators should re-examine the role of institutional ownership in tourism firms, as it was found to have no impact on cash holdings. The regulators may need to consider other factors, such as firm size and age, when developing policies and regulations to ensure that tourism firms have adequate cash holdings.

This study adds to the body of knowledge on the factors that influence cash management and ideal cash levels for the tourism industry. The examination of the effect of intellectual capital on cash holdings is a novel contribution, filling a gap in the existing literature. The findings on the speed of adjustment towards optimal cash holdings also provide support for the trade-off theory.