Empirical Study Of Manager Behavior,Product Market Competition And Cost Stickiness Of Chinese Listed Companies

Management accounting assumes that activity and its cost increase or decrease by a balanced proportion, and defines this assumption as "cost behavior". That is to say, the increase and decrease of costs are only affected by current levels, but without any relation to management decision or their future expectations. With the socialization of production conducted, managers gradually find that the simplified cost behavior model make the enterprises deviate from the true cost situation occurs, and exist limitations on cost planning, control and decisions. Contemporary studies have shown that the cost in the process of production and operation is not always increases or decreases in the same proportion with activity, when activity increases, the rate of costs increase is more than when activity decreases in the same level, the rate of costs decrease. Researchers define the asymmetry between cost and activity as cost stickiness; the marginal increase of cost minus the marginal decrease of cost reflects the size of its stickiness. The definition of cost stickiness and cost behavior of traditional management accounting concept has obvious differences, researchers have to change the traditional concepts of cost control and cost management. We have to evaluate the corporate performance more objective. Most researches on cost stickiness show that the causes of cost stickiness include three aspects:adjusting cost, agency problems and managerial expectations, with subjective and objective as the starting point, making interpretation from "Efficiency View""Compact View""Opportunistic View" three dimensions. Some studies suggest that the companies’"stickiness" phenomenon is not a natural formation, but caused by management decision-making behavior, the research on the impact of manager behavior and enterprise cost stickiness viscous began. For the study about how manager behavior influence cost stickiness, domestic researches interpret from internal governance perspective, but there is no literature to explore how is product market competition influence Chinese listed companies cost stickiness causing by manager behavior. Therefore, this thesis will do in-depth research about manager behavior, product market competition and cost stickiness.This thesis consists of6parts which proceed as follows:Part I is an introduction. This section introduces research background and significance, then defines and describes the research content and research methods, and summarizes the innovation of this thesis finally. Part II is the literature review. This part will combine and summary the literature of manager behavior, product market competition, cost stickiness and their relationship with each other. On this basis, we will summarize and analyze the status of existing literatures and study this article. Part III is theoretical analysis and hypothesis deduction. This section focuses on the basic theory of this thesis describes the issues involved, specially including the principal-agent theory, asymmetric information theory, assumptions, and the threat of bankruptcy sufficient information hypothesis. In order to pave the way for these theories, the behavior of managers of listed companies, product market competition and the cost stickiness among specific theoretical analysis, to find a meeting point between phenomena and theory, and then propose hypotheses. Part IV is the study design. This part will find phenomenon through a detailed analysis and theory, selected research elements that constitute the study sample from the phenomena, and sample data variable are defined, respectively, from the impact of the final cost stickiness and manager behavior, product market competition on manager behavior effect the impact of the two aspects of the design model. Part V is the empirical study. This part first make descriptive statically analysis for overall samples and group sample by product market competition degree. Then use the research model designed in Part IV to verify the three hypotheses. Provide multiple regression analysis and evidence for manager behavior, product market competition and administrative and selling cost stickiness. Part VI is research findings, policy recommendations and limitations. Through the above empirical research conclusions, analysis and recommendations put forward further measures to realize the significance of this writing, the final summary of the shortcomings of this article.Using data for Chinese listed companies in stock markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen over the period2008-2012, this thesis results in three dimensions:(1) Selling and Administrative stickiness exists in Chinese listed companies, and administrative stickiness is greater than selling stickiness;(2)"Building Empire" motivation will exacerbate the cost stickiness;(3) Fierce market competition will reduce company cost stickiness due to "Building Empire" motivation.This thesis makes three innovations to extant literature:(1) Combine cost stickiness, manager behavior and external governance mechanisms (product market competition degree) in a unified theoretical framework to broaden the field of cost stickiness researching;(2) Extent to researches about how external governance influence on cost stickiness;(3) In the perspective of external governance mechanisms to study the cost stickiness of Chinese listed companies can provide suggestions for the external governance.