會計盈餘之應計品質與管理薪酬契約間關係之研究──以台灣上市公司為例

Accrued Quality of Accounting Earnings and Management Incentive Contracting : Taking Listed Firms in Taiwan for Instance

本文研究會計盈餘之應計品質與管理薪酬契約之間的關聯。應計品質意指以會計應計數預測未來現金流量準確性，較高的應計品質一方面可以減少未來現金流量與盈餘的偏差程度，另一方面可以提升未來現金流量對盈餘的敏感性。過去的文獻常用績效指標，一種是會計盈餘指標，另一種則是股票市場價值指標，各公司董事會通常會根據這兩種指標對於管理績效的相對重要性與敏感性訂定高階管理階層的薪酬契約。因此，本研究使用這兩種績效進一步觀察會計盈餘的應計品質與管理薪酬契約間的關聯性，實證結果顯示，較好的應計品質通常顯示，薪酬契約中會有較高的盈餘權重，這表明應計品質應該會降低整體盈餘的雜訊。此外，本文再將應計品質進一步區分成固有應計品質與裁決性應計品質，實證結果也證實，盈餘權重和固有應計品質之間存在正向的相關性，和裁量性應計品質間的關係，則不顯著。

This paper investigates the association between accruals quality of accounting earnings and the management in incentive contracting. Higher accruals quality, which measures the precision with which accruals predict future cash flows, should decrease the deviations of earnings from future cash flows and increase the sensitivity of earnings to cash flows that are not attributable to managerial actions. According to prior research papers, two commonly used performance measurements, especially accounting earning and stock return, are referred as the most important indicators of top management performance. This paper is designed to examine the exact impacts of accrual quality in accounting earning, together with stock return on the design of incentive plan in Taiwan's listed companies. The impacts will be examined in form of the change of relative weights in the performance indicators. Our empirical evidence have shown that better accruals quality is associated with a higher weight on earnings in compensation contracts, which suggests that accruals quality overall reduces the noise in earnings. Based on previous literatures, accruals quality are comprised with innate component and discretionary component, we also find that the positive association between accruals quality and the weights on accounting earnings in compensation contracts are mainly driven by innate accruals quality rather than the discretionary quality.