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Project

Accounting information as an instrument for corporate governance in private firms (R-2905)

Financial accounting information plays a potentially important role in corporate governance since it is the primary source to evaluate the performance of management. Extant research mainly focused on the role of accounting information for investors and shareholders in the context of public firms. Whether accounting information is also valuable for other stakeholders remains a rather unexplored research question. This proposal aims to research the usefulness of accounting information for internal managers, members of the board of directors and bankers. Additionally, we focus our study to private firms since the representation of these firms in a country's economy is significant. For the first part, a large scale online survey is sent to CFOs of Belgian private firms to investigate their use of accounting information. Next, we interview members of the board of directors to gain insight into their frequency and purpose of accounting information use. In the final part of the study, we first investigate the banker's use of accounting information applying the survey instrument. Second, we research whether the rate of interest charged by financial institutions is related with the transparency of private firms. For all research questions, we examine whether differences in results exist between family and non-family firms.
Date:1 Jan 2011 →  31 Dec 2014
Keywords:Financial Accounting, Management Accounting
Disciplines:Economics and business