Do Firms Mimic Industry Leaders’ Accounting? Evidence from Financial Statement Comparability
研究发现新任CEO会提高公司财务报表与行业领导者的可比性，以获取合法性，尤其在管理者经验不足、网络联系紧密或经营环境波动时更明显。
ABSTRACT Following management theory on organizational legitimacy, we predict that managers mimic the accounting of industry-leading companies to gain legitimacy. Such demand for legitimacy is expected to be greater for new managers because stakeholders are more uncertain about the managers’ ability. Using a sample of CEO turnovers, we find that a firm increases financial statement comparability with industry leaders after the new CEO assumes office. This relation is stronger when (1) new managers lack executive experience at larger firms, are younger, or belong to an underrepresented group (i.e., are female or nonwhite); (2) networks that facilitate imitation are more intense, such as when firms and peers are located in the same metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and when they share auditors or blockholders; and (3) firms’ operating environments are more volatile. These findings support the idea that CEOs’ demand for legitimacy leads to more comparable accounting. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.