노동조합이 경영자의 이익조정에 미치는 영향 = 감시역할을 중심으로

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

We investigate the role of labor unions on earnings management. Jensen and Meckling (1976) posit that labor unions, which consist of insiders with considerable information about the firm, can play a significant monitoring role. This is because controlling the agency costs will increase the long-term profitability, therefore survivability of the firm. Nevertheless, empirical studies have paid little attention to the potential governance role of labor unions so far. Instead, most studies that examine the role of labor unions test the prediction that managers are likely to deflate earnings in the year of the wage renegotiation presumably to lower the amount of future wage. In this study, we directly test the conjecture based on the governance role of labor unions as underscored by Jensen and Meckling (1976). Specifically, we predict that firms with a strong labor union will successfully discourage extreme earnings management relative to their counterparts. The lower earnings management is consistent with the interpretation that labor unions play a valuable governance role in the firm. The absolute value of discretionary accruals calculated using the modified Jones model is the basis of our inference following prior studies. In particular, we hypothesize that the presence of a strong labor union is negatively associated with the absolute value of the discretionary accruals in the univariate and multivariate regression framework. Consistent with the prediction, the results reveal that there is a significant negative relationship between the existence of labor unions and earnings management. More specifically, the existence of labor unions is negatively associated with the absolute value of discretionary accruals. Taken together, the results demonstrate that labor unions tend to curb both the income increasing and decreasing earnings management. When we split the sample into firms with the income increasing and decreasing accruals and examine them separately, we find a negative association between the existence of labor unions and discretionary accruals in the income increasing subsample and a positive association between the existence of labor unions and discretionary accruals in the income decreasing subsample, indicating that the finding is not driven entirely by either the firms with income increasing or decreasing accruals. This provides further support to the prediction about the governance role of labor unions. Futhermore, when the firms with good ROA and bad ROA are separately examined, we find that the existence of labor unions is negatively associated with the absolute value of discretionary accruals, consistent with the finding from the analysis using absolute discretionary accruals. Overall, our finding provides compelling evidence to the prediction that labor unions provide an important governance role in reducing the agency costs in the firm.

참고문헌 (Reference)

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