افشای برون سپاری در گزارش سالانه : علل و اثرات بازده بازار

Firms increasingly are utilizing outsourcing to enhance or maintain their competitiveness. Prior research shows that capital markets value a firm's decision to outsource. This study uses a sample of firms announcing outsourcing arrangements in a press release to examine which factors are associated with the subsequent decision to voluntarily provide or withhold information about outsourcing in their annual report. The paper also examines whether annual report disclosure is a reliable signal of future market performance. We find that underperforming firms, larger firms, and firms experiencing negative outsourcing announcement market returns and negative long-term market returns are more likely to disclose outsourcing in their annual reports. There is also evidence that firms' disclosure of outsourcing in the annual report signals an improvement in market performance that is credible to the capital markets. We contend that the disclosure and subsequent firm performance issues we investigate apply to any type of outsourcing arrangement, and therefore our results are relevant to future information systems research on this subject. Our findings also suggest that regulatory standards could reduce private information search costs for investors by providing a common disclosure methodology for outsourcing activities.

It is estimated that about 34% of total services purchased by businesses in the U.S. in 2004 were outsourcing-related, up from 31% in 1997 (Yuskavage et al., 2006). Sia et al. (2008, p. 407) state that, “outsourcing is now a strategic option that few organizations can afford to ignore.” In spite of the economic and strategic significance of outsourcing and the potential impact on firm performance, firms are not required to disclose outsourcing activities in annual reports or other regulated filings. Of course, firms may decide voluntarily to disclose outsourcing activities through other media including press releases, conference calls, forecasts, and the annual report itself. Prior research finds that capital markets value information about firms' outsourcing activities (Hayes et al., 2000 and Florin et al., 2005). In general, informative voluntary disclosures assist investors and creditors in understanding firms' operations, thereby enhancing the efficiency of the capital allocation process. Past studies have shown significant variations in disclosure practices when regulations regarding required financial statement disclosures of important firm activities are ambiguous; such variations can cause firm annual reports to be less informative (Mauldin and Richtermeyer, 2004). Given that outsourcing is an important economic activity in the U.S., and given that information about a firm's outsourcing activities is valuable to investors, knowing how outsourcing is disclosed in the annual report and knowing what factors drive the voluntary disclosure decision not only are important in its own right but also can inform deliberations about possible mandatory outsourcing disclosure regulations. At the same time, given that firms do outsource, evaluating the effects of outsourcing on future performance, including market returns, is also relevant to these deliberations. As is described in greater detail below, while this manuscript does not specifically examine IT outsourcing, it does examine broad types of outsourcing and similar accounting disclosure issues which could apply to any type of outsourcing arrangement; therefore, the results of our study are relevant to and could inform future AIS research in general, and IT outsourcing research in particular.

This study contributes to a contemporary decision problem—management's voluntary disclosure decisions made by management—and to the outsourcing literature specifically, by providing information about firms' outsourcing-related disclosure choices during the period 2000 to 2002. We use a logistic regression model to identify the determinants of a firm's voluntary annual report disclosure choice related to outsourcing, using variables from the voluntary disclosure literature and the salient characteristics of outsourcing decisions. We find that underperforming firms (with respect to return on assets) and larger firms (in terms of total assets) are more likely to make disclosures related to outsourcing. We find that firms experiencing both short- and long-term negative capital market reactions, firms listed on the NASDAQ, and firms that they themselves (as opposed to the supplying firm) announce the outsourcing agreement in a press release are more likely to disclose outsourcing in their annual reports. These findings confirm the results of prior research that the market reacts to certain voluntary disclosures, but in the case of outsourcing voluntary disclosures, the negative reaction may be viewed skeptically by the market, especially in the case of underperforming firms, until the potential benefits from outsourcing are actually realized by the firm. In order to test whether the capital markets accept the disclosure as a reliable signal of expected improvement in market returns, we compare the market returns of firms voluntarily disclosing to firms not outsourcing in their ensuing (the following year's) annual report. We find using OLS that poorly performing firms voluntarily disclosing outsourcing in a press release and then subsequently disclosing outsourcing in their annual report appear to be associated with subsequent abnormal investor returns—therefore signaling in the press release that such firms expect a turnaround in their market performance as a result of the implementation of the outsourcing activity. Our results therefore provide an example of how the economic theory contained in the voluntary disclosure literature applies to firm outsourcing disclosure decisions.