The Characteristics Of Top Management Team And The Voluntary Information Disclosure Of Corporate Revenue Plan

With rapid economic development, competitions in capital market becoming intense. Information plays an important role in the market. Information is the bond and bridge between listed companies and investors, which can reduce the degree of information asymmetry in the process of trading and save transaction cost. Investors’ and other stakeholders’ policy decisions are inseparable from the company’s information disclosures. The Listed Company Governance Standards, published by China securities regulatory commission (CSRC) in January2002, had already point out that the listed company should not only disclose information in accordance with the mandatory, but also actively disclose all possible information that may affect the decisions of stakeholders. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange Listed Companies Investor relations Management Guidance published by SZSE in2003, first putted forward the voluntary information disclosure. It points out that the voluntary information disclosure shall abide by the principle of good faith and the principle of justice at the same time, and gives companies more specific guidance. In July2005, China securities regulatory commission (CSRC) explicitly supported voluntary information disclosure behavior in the system, and published The Listed Company and Investor Relations Work Instructions to roughly divide the scope of voluntary information disclosure. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange Listed Company Social Responsibility Guidelines published by SZSE expanded the scope of voluntary information disclosure to social responsibility, and more purposeful specified the classification of social responsibility which emphasized on protection of various stakeholders. Standard for Content and Format of Stock Company Information Disclosure, published by CSRC in December2007, once again made a clear emphasis on the minimum requirements of the company’s information disclosure that all of the possible information which may affect the decisions of stakeholders should be disclosed. This file also divided the different requirements of information disclosure into different levels as detailed disclosure, duty-bound disclosure, permissible disclosure and un-limited disclosure. No.30Standard for Content and Format of Security Company Information Disclosure published by CSRC in January2012, has specific requirements for the information disclosure which can encourage the listed companies to make the information disclosure more effective.Although academic circles increased pay attention to voluntary information disclosure research in recent years, most of those researches are based on the perspective of Agency Theory and Signal Transmission Theory. Agency Theory and Signal Transmission Theory assume that administrators have no individual differences, or assume individual differences have little effect on company’s decisions. Agency Theory thinks the executives have a strong motivation through voluntary information disclosure to reduce agency costs. Signal Transmission Theory thinks voluntary information disclosure is an important tool for the blue-chip listed companies to avoid adverse selection and to transmit good signals of company’s prospects to investors. Now, whether theory field or practice field has been fully realized the characteristics of top administrators have important influence on the managers from cognitive to behavioral decision. And voluntary information disclosure included in behavioral decisions of the top administrators. At the same time, the research results of a large number of scholars at home and abroad also show that management background characteristics do affect the behavior of the management. But few studies on specific function that top management team disclosed the voluntary information of corporate revenue plan. And relevant empirical research is rarer. Based on Upper Echelons Theory, regarded the senior management team characteristics as premise, can rich related theoretical research on top management team and companies voluntary information disclosure. Its significance embodied in three aspects:one is to promote the inner running mechanism and model research between the top management team and company’s voluntary information disclosure, and to further enrich the research achievements about the top management team and the voluntary information disclosure; Secondly, is to be able to help enterprises make a better decision in some major problems, even help enterprises to predict the behavior of competitors; The third is to efforts to improve voluntary information disclosure, to promote the healthy and sustainable development of the enterprise, and to provide their top management team’s concordance with relevant theoretical basis. This article introduced the Upper Echelon Theory. A study on voluntary information disclosure in China will be a beneficial attempt.Healy and Palepu (2001) suggest that take management forecasts as the proxy variables of voluntary information disclosure have the advantage of time certainty and measuring accuracy. According to the relevant provisions of the China securities regulatory commission, the listed company shall disclose the company’s future development prospect in its annual report. At the same time, the company shall disclose the next year’s business plan, which must include (but not limited to) company’s income, cost plan, and next year’s business objectives. Wan Peng and Qu Xiaohui(2012) thought, from the standards for content and format of the annual report required by CSRC, the company’s annual business plan seems to be asked to mandatory disclosure; but from each company’s specific disclosure practices, the listed companies play the "word game" and not to disclose the quantitative revenue plan. Using words or interval prediction to disclose revenue plan, which indicates companies hold the real freedom and will not be clearly punished. Based on this, disclosure of next year’s business plan by "management discussion and analysis" is essentially a voluntary information disclosure. It also makes research on voluntary information disclosure of revenue plan with Chinese characteristics.This article selects Shanghai and Shenzhen A share listed companies from2009to2011as research samples, respectively demonstrates the relationship between the top management team’s homogeneity and heterogeneity and company’s voluntary information disclosure of revenue plan. The results of the study found that when the top management team has the longer average age, the greater average tenure, and the higher average level of education, the behavior of voluntary information disclosure company revenue plan will be more positive. At the same time, when the top management team has a greater proportion of female, company will more inclines to voluntary information disclosure of the revenue plan. And when top management team has a big heterogeneity in age, tenure and the education degree, will also promote company’s voluntary information disclosure of the revenue plan. In addition, regression results also showed that the agency cost between managers and shareholders have a negative correlation relationship with top management team’s voluntary disclosure of the revenue plan; the bigger proportion of independent directors in the board, the higher financial leverage and the presence of the outgoing chairman and general manager, voluntary revenue plan disclosure of listed companies will be more aggressive.This article primary includes five parts, they are respectively are:The first chapter is introduction. This chapter main introduction paper selected topic background and research significance, research technique and, content structure arrangement and innovation place and so on.The second chapter is literature review. This chapter describes the background characteristics of top management team and the voluntary disclosure involved with the latest research relevant to the study progress, and its briefly summarized and reviewed, many of them will be important for the next study.The third chapter is the theoretical basis. First, the concept of voluntary disclosure, the executive team and the characteristics of senior management team will be defined. Second, the upper echelons theory, asymmetric information theory, agency theory and signaling theory relevant to the study are also involved and as full of the important support theory. Finally, the research hypothesis of this paper will be derived.The fourth part is the research design and empirical analysis. First of all, the sample selection and data sources will be described. According to the study, variables and research model will be designed. Second, using logistic regression tests the preceding assumptions.The fifth part is the conclusion and the enlightenment, this part presents the research conclusion, suggestions and shortcomings.The innovation of this paper is as follows:(l)The scholars basically study voluntary disclosure of information based on the agency theory and the signaling theory. The upper echelons theory is introduced to the empirical research on voluntary disclosure will abundant research results.(2)Healy and Palepu (2001) considered that as a proxy variable of voluntary information disclosure, management forecast has the advantages of time to identify and measure accurately. Although the company revenue plan is actually a management forecast, due to the difference of information disclosure regulation, no research on the aspects of earnings forecasts abroad. Voluntary information disclosure of revenue plan roots in the system background of China, so there is little research will use revenue plan as the company prediction to study. This paper takes the revenue plan in China’s listing corporation management’s discussion and analysis as the proxy variable of voluntary information disclosure. This is another innovative point.