전략적 일탈과 비대칭적 원가행태

We investigate the relationship between strategic deviance and cost asymmetry and then examine the effects of a firm’s earnings transparency on these relationships. Within an industry, many firms tend to imitate peers’ strategic choices, but few firms adopt a strategy that deviates from industry norms, called strategic deviance. Recent studies on strategic deviance focus on agency problems arising from information asymmetry in strategically deviant firms. For instance, managers in strategically deviant firms would have more opportunities to pursue earnings management or spend on privileged consumption. Thus, we anticipate that strategic deviance might be associated with cost asymmetry. Our results show that the higher degree of strategic deviance, the higher the cost stickiness. Also, the positive relationship is higher only when a firm’s earnings transparency is lower. Furthermore, we find that the positive effect of strategic deviance on cost stickiness is not associated with deliberate resource commitment decisions by rational managers, ruling out the possibility that the relationship is driven by rational manager’s decision making. These results support the role of agency problems in channeling the positive association between strategic deviance and cost stickiness. We contribute to the literature by enhancing the understanding of deviant strategy and asymmetric cost behavior.