Implied Tradeoffs of Chief Financial Officer Accounting Expertise: Evidence from Firm-Manager Matching
研究发现，CFO的会计专业知识虽有助于财务报告，但可能缺乏运营和战略经验；企业会根据对非会计专业能力的需求来匹配CFO，且匹配不佳会导致高管更替。
We present evidence that although individuals with accounting expertise bring key skills to the financial reporting responsibilities of the chief financial officer (CFO) position, they tend to lack educational and career experiences relevant to nonaccounting responsibilities (e.g., operations and strategy). Assuming boards’ perceptions of CFO accounting expertise are correct on average, we provide evidence of tradeoffs of CFO accounting expertise by examining how differences in CFO backgrounds shape executive employment decisions. Firms with greater demand for nonaccounting expertise are less likely to hire an accounting expert CFO, consistent with ex ante firm-manager matching. Ex post, significant declines in firm-manager fit predict CFO turnover and other compensating changes in the composition of the senior management team. Accounting expert CFOs are also less likely to become chief executive officers, suggesting that CFO experience does not fully mitigate these tradeoffs. Collectively, the results suggest important tradeoffs inherent to CFO accounting expertise that shape the structure of the senior management team. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting.