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文献信息：

文献标题：Impact of Aggressive Working Capital Management Policy on Firms’ Profitability（激进的营运资本管理政策对企业盈利能力的影响）

国外作者：Mian Sajid Nazir，Talat Afza

文献出处：《The IUP Journal of Applied Finance》,2009,Vol.15,PP19-30 字数统计：英文2669单词，14456字符；中文4407汉字

外文文献：

Impact of Aggressive Working Capital Management Policy

on Firms’ Profitability

Introduction

The corporate finance literature has traditionally focused on the study of long-term financial decisions, particularly investments, capital structure, dividends or company valuation decisions. However, short-term assets and liabilities are important components of total assets and need to be carefully analyzed. Management of these short-term assets and liabilities warrants a careful investigation since the working capital management plays an important role in a firm’s profitability and risk as well as its value (Smith, 1980). Efficient management of working capital is a fundamental part of the overall corporate strategy in creating the shareholders’ value. Firms try to keep an optimal level of working capital that maximizes their value (Deloof, 2003; Howorth and Westhead, 2003 and Afza and Nazir, 2007).

In general, from the perspective of Chief Financial Officer (CFO), working capital management is a simple and straightforward concept of ensuring the ability of the organization to fund the difference between the short-term assets and short-term liabilities (Harris, 2005). However, a ‘Total’ approach is desired as it can cover all the

company’s activities relating to vendor, customer and product (Hall, 2002). In practice, working capital management has become one of the most important issues in the organizations where many financial executives are struggling to identify the basic working capital drivers and an appropriate level of working capital (Lamberson, 1995). Consequently, companies can minimize risk and improve the overall performance by understanding the role and drivers of working capital management.

A firm may adopt an aggressive working capital management policy with a low level of current assets as a percentage of total assets, or it may also be used for the financing decisions of the firm in the form of high level of current liabilities as a percentage of total liabilities. Excessive levels of current assets may have a negative effect on the firm’s profitability, whereas a low level of current assets may lead to a lower level of liquidity and stockouts, resulting in difficulties in maintaining smooth operations (Van Horne and Wachowicz, 2004).

The main objective of working capital management is to maintain an optimal balance between each of the working capital components. Business success heavily depends on the financial executives’ ability to effectively manage receivables, inventory, and payables (Filbeck and Krueger, 2005). Firms can reduce their financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion projects by minimizing the amount of investment tied up in current assets. Most of the financial managers’ time and efforts are allocated towards bringing non-optimal levels of current assets and liabilities back to optimal levels (Lamberson, 1995). An optimal level of working capital would be the one in which a balance is achieved between risk and efficiency. It requires continuous monitoring to maintain proper level in various components of working capital, i.e., cash receivables, inventory and payables, etc.

In general, current assets are considered as one of the important components of total assets of a firm. A firm may be able to reduce the investment in fixed assets by renting or leasing plant and machinery, whereas the same policy cannot be followed for the components of working capital. The high level of current assets may reduce the risk of liquidity associated with the opportunity cost of funds that may have been invested in long-term assets. Though the impact of working capital policies on

profitability is highly important, only a few empirical studies have been carried out to examine this relationship. This study investigates the potential relationship of aggressive/conservative policies with the accounting and market measures of profitability of Pakistani firms using a panel data set for the period 1998-2005. The present study is expected to contribute to better understand these policies and their impact on profitability, especially in emerging markets like Pakistan.

Research Methodology Variables Used in the Study

This study uses aggressive investment policy as used by Weinraub and Visscher (1998), who analyzed working capital policies of 126 industrial firms in the US market. Aggressive Investment Policy (AIP) results in minimal level of investment in current assets versus fixed assets. In contrast, a conservative investment policy places a greater proportion of capital in liquid assets with the opportunity cost of less profitability. If the level of current assets increases in proportion to the total assets of the firm, the management is said to be more conservative in managing the current assets of the firm. In order to measure the degree of aggressiveness of working capital investment policy, the following ratio was used:

where a lower ratio means a relatively aggressive policy.

On the other hand, an Aggressive Financing Policy (AFP) utilizes higher levels of current liabilities and less long-term debt. In contrast, a conservative financing policy uses more long-term debt and capital and less current liabilities. The firms are more aggressive in terms of current liabilities management if they are concentrating on the use of more current liabilities which put their liquidity on risk. The degree of aggressiveness of a financing policy adopted by a firm is measured by working capital financing policy, and the following ratio is used: