Purpose

Employees, as internal stakeholders, not only play significant roles in a company’s operations but are also important users of a company’s financial information. However, prior accounting research to date has not explored whether employees incorporate a firm’s ability to meet earnings benchmarks in forming and revising their perceptions of firms. This study aims to focus on whether a firm’s ability to meet relevant earnings benchmarks impacts employees’ perceptions.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use employees’ perception scores from the 100 Best Companies to Work for from 1998 to 2015. The authors conduct an empirical study to examine the impact of beating earnings benchmarks on the perceptions of employees by estimating regression analyses. The dependent variable is employee perceptions of the firm. The variables of interest are the earnings growth and the analyst forecast benchmarks. The authors control for earnings performance and other determinants of employees’ perceptions.

Findings

The authors find that beating the earnings benchmarks is relevant for employees but has different impacts on the employees’ perceptions of firms. Specifically, both level and change analyses suggest that a firm’s ability to beat the earnings growth benchmark affects employees’ perceptions. However, the authors find no associations between employees’ perceptions and the analyst forecast benchmarks.

Research limitations/implications

The authors recognize the amount of variation among the two groups’ perceptions from the binary variable creates an inherent limitation that the authors examine the best firms in terms of employee perceptions compared to the second-best firms. Therefore, the authors create another measure, EMPLOYEE_PERCEPTION2, which equals one if the firm’s ranking is within the top quartile and zero if the firm’s ranking is within the bottom quartile. This new variable increases the variation of employees’ perceptions in the sample to address the inherent limitation by allowing us to compare the best firms to the worst firms in the sample.

Originality/value

The study highlights the importance of beating earnings benchmarks for employees as a broader group of stakeholders. The study contributes to accounting benchmarks literature by exploring a different group of earnings benchmarks users. The authors also contribute to psychology studies by providing empirical evidence on the previously untested, intuitive prediction that employees’ views depend on a firm’s ability to meet relevant earnings benchmarks.

中文翻译：

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员工的看法和收入基准

目的

员工作为内部利益相关者，不仅在公司运营中发挥着重要作用，也是公司财务信息的重要使用者。然而，迄今为止，先前的会计研究尚未探讨员工是否将公司满足盈利基准的能力纳入形成和修改他们对公司的看法。本研究旨在关注公司达到相关收益基准的能力是否会影响员工的看法。

设计/方法/途径

作者使用了 1998 年至 2015 年 100 家最适合工作的公司的员工认知分数。作者进行了一项实证研究，通过估计回归分析来检验超过收入基准对员工认知的影响。因变量是员工对公司的看法。感兴趣的变量是盈利增长和分析师预测基准。作者控制了收入绩效和员工看法的其他决定因素。

发现

作者发现，超过收入基准与员工相关，但对员工对公司的看法有不同的影响。具体而言，水平分析和变化分析都表明，公司超过盈利增长基准的能力会影响员工的看法。然而，作者发现员工的看法与分析师预测基准之间没有关联。

研究局限性/影响

作者认识到来自二元变量的两组认知之间的差异量造成了一个固有的局限性，即作者在与第二好的公司相比的员工认知方面检查了最好的公司。因此，作者创建了另一个衡量指标 EMPLOYEE_PERCEPTION2，如果公司排名在前四分位数内，则该指标等于 1，如果公司排名在后四分位数内，则该指标为零。这个新变量增加了样本中员工看法的差异，通过允许我们比较样本中最好的公司和最差的公司来解决固有的局限性。

原创性/价值

该研究强调了员工作为更广泛的利益相关者群体超过收入基准的重要性。该研究通过探索一组不同的收益基准用户，为会计基准文献做出了贡献。作者还为心理学研究做出了贡献，为以前未经检验的直觉预测提供了经验证据，即员工的观点取决于公司达到相关收益基准的能力。