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Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Technology Economics is the property of Chinese Society of Technology Economics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) performance is an essential indicator for measuring the sustainability of corporations. It has received increased attention from capital market participants after the proposal of the 'dual carbon' goal. Innovation is a necessary skill for corporations to compete in the market. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of innovation on the ESG performance of corporations based on the dual incentive perspective of government subsidies and equity incentives. Using data of China's A-share main board listed corporations from 2017 to 2022, OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) models are constructed to conduct empirical research. The results show that enhanced innovation can significantly improve corporate ESG performance. This paper also conducts other tests to ensure the robustness of the findings and address potential endogeneity issues. Further analysis shows that both using government subsidies as external incentives and using equity incentives as internal incentives can positively moderate the above findings. Heterogeneity analyses discover that government subsidies granted to asset-advantaged corporations have a more substantial moderating effect than those granted to asset-weakened corporations; equity incentives granted to core technical staff have a more substantial moderating effect than those granted to executives. The concept that innovation with dual incentives can enhance corporate ESG performance can aid in developing programs to improve their ESG performance and generate novel ideas for high-quality, sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates whether and how audit committee (AC) equity incentives affect future stock price crash risk. Consistent with our model prediction that equity incentives for ACs contribute to reducing the skewness of return distributions, we document evidence of a negative relationship between AC equity incentives and expected crash risk for a merged sample of 6550 US-listed firms over the 2001–2018 period, even after controlling for a wide range of other firm characteristics, using alternative variable specifications, and addressing potential endogeneity concerns. On average, a one-standard-deviation increase in AC equity incentives is associated with a reduction of 14.09–15.46% in stock price crash risk. Further analysis shows that AC equity incentives affect crash risk through financial reporting quality, the negative relationship between AC equity incentives and future stock price crash risk is more pronounced for firms with weaker external governance and for firms with more financial expertise in the AC, and this negative relationship is mainly driven by option-based equity incentives. Taken together, these findings are consistent with the view that equity-based compensation is critical for inducing greater monitoring efforts from AC members and mitigating managerial incentives to withhold bad news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the expanding global digital economy, the digital transformation of businesses has become a critical component of modern operations. This study investigates the relationship between executive incentives and the digital transformation in A-share-listed Chinese companies from 2011 to 2020. Using multi-period DID and linear regression models, we analyzed how equity and compensation incentives influence this transformation. We discovered an inverse U-shaped correlation between executive incentive intensity and corporate digital transformation. Additionally, the relationship between compensation incentives and digital transformation is initially non-positive but transitions to a non-linear positive association beyond a certain threshold. Our research also reveals that digital process innovation and digital business expansion mediate the relationship between executive motivation and digital transformation. These findings highlight the importance of appropriate executive rewards in fostering innovative thinking and advancing digital transformation. This study contributes to the understanding of the drivers and effects of digital transformation and the role of equity incentives in governance. It offers valuable insights for companies aiming to accelerate digital transformation, optimize industrial structure, and promote economic development. Based on this study, further research on this issue can be conducted in the future by refining the personality traits, educational background, and cognitive differences of executives.

Although new investment can be viewed as a decision to pursue projects from a wide number of growth opportunities with easily discernible (and presumably preferable) risk profiles, downsizing (e.g., through layoffs, plant closings, asset divestitures, etc.) is a dichotomous choice to either abandon or continue an existing project where the relative risk between these options is not clear. Our evidence suggests that vega in the pre‐downsizing period is associated with risky investment that necessitates future downsizing. We further find that contemporaneous vega is associated with a greater likelihood of downsizing. On the other hand, our evidence suggests that delta is a significant impediment to downsizing. We examine the influence of behavioral factors in the decision‐making process and find downsizing decisions are discouraged by managerial overconfidence but encouraged by managers' aversion to ambiguity. Finally, we investigate whether equity incentives and behavioral factors lead to better downsizing decisions. We find that downsizing firms with high ambiguity perform better after downsizing relative to their matched pair with lower ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research on the influence of personal attributes of top management on a firm's innovative behavior has recently gained much traction in the corporate finance literature. However little is known about the role of professional background of top management in influencing corporate R&D efficiency. The present research employs data of China's A-share listed firms during the period of 2008–2016 to explore this association. Empirical outcomes reveal that top management with an R&D background significantly enhance Chinese firms' R&D efficiency. Moreover, equity incentives for the core R&D team, lesser pay disparity between senior management and employees, and the appointment of directors with R&D background play a mediating role between R&D-savvy top management and firm's innovation capacity. The study findings establish a link between top management's human capital and an enterprise's technological capability and show that adopting appropriate innovation strategies and R&D management practices is conducive to achieving the R&D efficiency in Chinese enterprises. Our results are robust to alternate econometric specifications and alternate variable specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science and technology innovation plays a vital role in the sustainable development of enterprises, and even in the security and sustainable development of a nation. Against the background of China's structural "deleveraging" macro policy, the following two aspects are considered in this research: First, should operating leverage be removed, and how does it affect the innovation investment of enterprises? Second, what will be the impact of the implementation of equity incentives on the relationship between operating leverage and innovation investment? Using a longitudinal panel dataset of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020, this study empirically tested the impact and mechanism of operating leverage on enterprise innovation investment. The findings show that operating leverage significantly contributes to an increase in enterprise innovation investment in general, but the positive correlation trend decreases with the increase in operating leverage. The implementation of equity incentives plays a positive role in moderating the relationship between operating leverage and innovation investment. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that the promotion effect of operating leverage on innovation investment is significant only in non-state owned enterprises (SOE), and the positive regulating effect of equity incentives in non-SOEs is more significant than that of the overall sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand how firms' asymmetric risk environment affects the CEO compensation structure. I investigate how firm's downside risk and upside potential differentially affect the choice between cash and equity compensation and the choice between stock options and restricted stock compensation. First, I show that, as downside risk (upside potential) increases, boards grant more cash compensation (more equity compensation) and less equity compensation (less cash compensation). Second, I show that the proportion of CEO option compensation in total equity compensation increases with downside risk and decreases with upside potential. My findings support the idea that boards respond to changes in their firms' risk environments by adjusting the structure of CEO compensation to reflect riskaverse CEOs' risk preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the driving forces behind the positive association observed between corporate investment and stock market valuation, and how they interact with managerial equity incentives and informativeness of investment. We build a dynamic model where managers use investment choices to influence investors' opinions about firms' future prospects and increase the market valuation. The incentives to manipulate the valuation processes increase with managerial equity incentives and informativeness of investment. Our empirical findings support the model's predictions that the tendency of using investment to boost market valuation is stronger when managerial stock ownership is high or when earnings quality is low (i.e., there is strong reliance on investment for information). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the data of 253 A-share listed new energy enterprises from 2010–2021, this paper studies the correlations among equity incentives, the three contract elements of equity incentives and the financial performance of new energy enterprises by using fixed-effect regression analysis, and on this basis, Granger causality analysis is applied to determine the causal relationship, and finally, the degree of influence of equity incentives contract elements is further studied by Grey Relational Analysis. It is found that equity incentives positively affect the financial performance of new energy enterprises as a whole. In terms of the choice of equity incentive contract elements, the influence is more significant when the granting method is stock options, when the exercise duration is longer, and when the exercise conditions are stricter. As to the degree of influence, the influence of equity incentive method and exercise conditions on the financial performance of new energy enterprises is greater, but the influence of exercise duration is the lowest. Therefore, it is suggested that new energy enterprises can choose more stock options for equity incentives, create stricter exercise conditions and set the duration of the equity incentive scheme between 5 and 10 years with their own characteristics.

This study examines whether and how the presence of managerial hedging opportunities, which allows executives to reduce the sensitivity of their equity-based compensation to the firm's stock price performance, affects firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. We find a significant and negative relationship between the presence of managerial hedging opportunities and firms' CSR performance. The effect of managerial hedging opportunities on CSR performance is more pronounced for CEOs with greater personal hedging needs. Additionally, the effect is weakened if firms limit corporate insiders from trading exchange-listed options. Overall, this study suggests that allowing managers to delink their equity-based compensation from firm stock price performance through hedging their personal portfolios can lead to unexpected consequences for firms' CSR performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first studies the impact of stakeholder interest on the agency problem by selecting different proxies for key measurements from companies listed on second‐board markets from 2013 to 2019 to investigate the effect of the equity incentive on companies' innovation levels. In addition, this paper adds two moderating variables, ownership concentration and financing constraints, to analyse their moderating effects on the relationships between equity incentives and enterprise innovation. The empirical results show a significant positive correlation between equity incentives and the level of corporate innovation output. In addition, a high degree of ownership concentration can strengthen the positive promoting effect of equity incentives on a company's innovation output. However, when a company faces financing constraints, the promotion effect of equity incentives on the company's innovation will be restrained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Listed companies have long faced difficulties in both their global investment strategies and corporate governance improvement, while they are supposed to pay more attention to their sustainable development performance. The complex linkages between these three make the choice of corporate strategy a challenge for public companies. Given the economic downturn in the post-pandemic era, the challenges for listed companies are likely to be even more acute. How companies weigh the relationships between these three and how to ensure the implementation of a global investment strategy that effectively meets sustainable development are pressing challenges. Using a sample of Chinese listed companies during 2010–2018, this paper empirically examines the relationship between corporate sustainable development performance, global investment reflected by outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), and corporate governance reflected by equity incentives with econometric tools. We show the positive effects of OFDI on corporate sustainable development performance and discover the crowding-out effect of equity incentives, which challenges the view of equity motivation. These findings are robust. We further explore the heterogeneities in terms of industries and regions. We finally provide some useful implications on how to coordinate the global investment and internal equity incentives to improve corporate sustainable development performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides plausible causal evidence on the effect of executive equity incentives on opportunistic manager behavior. I exploit a unique setting created by the introduction of Financial Accounting Standard (FAS) 123R in 2005, which led to an exogenous increase in the cost of option pay, causing a substantial decline in option pay for some firms while leaving others largely unaffected. Using difference-in-differences analyses with a treatment group of firms that show a decline in option pay and two control groups, I find that the likelihood of a treatment firm meeting or beating analyst forecasts decreases by 14–20%. The results show that the relatively high levels of meet-or-beat before FAS 123R were largely driven by real activities manipulation such as abnormal asset sales and sales manipulation to beat analysts' benchmarks, while accrual manipulation and analyst management were less relevant. Together, the results suggest that equity incentives encourage opportunistic actions to meet or beat earnings expectations, and a decline in option pay results in a decline in earnings management to meet earnings expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the relation between managerial ability and the quality of a firm's information environment. An emerging stream of research has identified managerial ability as an important determinant of accruals quality and management forecast quality. However, our understanding of the impact of managerial ability on a firm's broader information environment is incomplete because it captures more than these specific financial reporting disclosures. Using a composite index based on various proxies for a firm's information environment, we find a positive relation between managerial ability and a firm's information environment. Consistent with our argument that managers' equity incentives improve disclosure quality, we find that the quality of a firm's information environment improves when managers have higher levels of equity incentives. We contribute to the literature by providing more complete and conclusive evidence about the impact of managerial ability on a firm's broader information environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how executives' ability to control their firms' exposure to risk affects the design of their incentive-compensation contracts. Our natural experimental evidence shows that exchange-traded weather derivatives allow executives to control their firms' exposure to weather risk. Once these derivatives became available, those executives who use them to hedge experience relative reductions in their total compensation and equity incentives. The decline in compensation is consistent with a reduction in the risk premium that executives receive for exposure to weather risk. The decline in equity incentives is consistent with the relation between risk and incentives shifting in a complementary direction when executives can better control their firms' exposure to risk. Collectively, our findings provide evidence that executives' ability to control their firms' exposure and, by extension, their own to an important source of risk influences the design of their incentive-compensation contracts. JEL Classifications: G32; J33; J41. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green innovation plays an important role in reducing pollution and promoting sustainable development. However, not all managers, as decision-makers of enterprises, have a long-term vision to implement green innovation. The impact of managerial myopia on firm green innovation has not been examined by existing literature. Drawn on time-oriented theory in social psychology and upper echelon theory in management, this paper puts forward the relationship between managerial myopia and firm green innovation, and then constructs a managerial myopia index by text analysis and machine learning. Using a sample of publicly listed Chinese firms from 2009 to 2020, this paper finds that managerial myopia is significantly negatively associated with firms' green innovation. Every one standard deviation increase in managerial myopia makes enterprise green innovation decrease by about 1.9% standard deviation. Further analysis reveals that equity incentives and institutional investors both weaken the negative effect of managerial myopia on green innovation. This study contributes to the literature on green innovation and upper echelons theory and it also has several implications for firms' engagement in green innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research documents the phenomenon of sticky cost behavior where costs change asymmetrically between an increase and a decrease in sales and attributes this behavior to managers' deliberate decisions. In this paper, we test the relationship between sticky cost behavior and equity incentives. We find that a measure of the sensitivity of managerial wealth to stock price (delta) is positively related to sticky costs where costs increase more quickly in response to a sales increase than they decline in response to a sales decrease. Conversely, we find that a measure of the sensitivity of managerial wealth to stock volatility (vega) is positively related to anti-sticky costs where costs increase to a lesser extent in response to a sales increase than they decline in response to a sales decrease. These results indicate the importance that equity incentives have on managerial resource adjustment decisions in response to changes in firm activity levels. JEL Classifications: G32; G34. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green innovation plays an important role in reducing pollution and promoting sustainable development. However, not all managers, as decision-makers of enterprises, have a long-term vision to implement green innovation. The impact of managerial myopia on firm green innovation has not been examined by existing literature. Drawn on time-oriented theory in social psychology and upper echelon theory in management, this paper puts forward the relationship between managerial myopia and firm green innovation, and then constructs a managerial myopia index by text analysis and machine learning. Using a sample of publicly listed Chinese firms from 2009 to 2020, this paper finds that managerial myopia is significantly negatively associated with firms’ green innovation. Every one standard deviation increase in managerial myopia makes enterprise green innovation decrease by about 1.9% standard deviation. Further analysis reveals that equity incentives and institutional investors both weaken the negative effect of managerial myopia on green innovation. This study contributes to the literature on green innovation and upper echelons theory and it also has several implications for firms’ engagement in green innovation.

• The higher the intensity of equity incentives received by executives, the higher the level of accrued earnings management. • The higher the expected personal income tax liability faced by executives, the lower the accrued earnings management level. • The higher the proportion of shares sold within six months after the unlocking date to shares sold within 12 months after the unlocking date. This paper selects companies that implemented equity incentives during 2011–2021 as a research sample, and delves into how executives avoid personal income tax burden and alleviate the pressure on tax-paying funds through earnings management and stock reductions. The results of the study show that as the amount of executives' true tax burden increases, the proportion of shares they reduce their holdings in the six months prior to the unlock date increases accordingly. In addition, the proportion of executives who reduced their holdings was significantly higher in the group with higher tax collection intensity than in the group with lower collection intensity. These findings are important for understanding the impact of executive tax behavior and tax collection policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of anti-corruption and equity incentive risk on financial misreporting in the context of China’s unique corporate ownership structure and governance regime. Using a sample comprising 2,708 cases of financial restatement over the 2007–2017 period. Our key findings suggest that managers’ shareholdings are significantly and positively associated with their firms’ financial misreporting, and certain equity risk factors dramatically alter Chinese corporate governance. Furthermore, managers’ motivation to misreport is significantly more pronounced in non–state owned enterprises (non-SOEs), suggesting that equity incentive risk effects mitigate the “absence of ownership” problem believed to affect SOEs. Managers in highly competitive industries and firms with low institutional ownership are found to be highly motivated to misreport performance.

Do managerial equity incentives benefit or impede R&D investments? To address this question and the inconsistent empirical findings on the topic, this study investigates the relationship between equity incentives and R&D investments as well as the threshold effects of some contextual factors. Our study evidence a curvilinear inverted U-shaped relationship between equity incentives and R&D investments by using GMM system estimators for a sample of 158 Chinese firms for the 2006–2018 period. Our findings also indicated that the influence of equity incentives on R&D investments is constrained by contextual factors such as financial slack and equity concentration, suggesting that financial slack plays a double threshold effect on the above relationship, while equity concentration performed a significant single threshold effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The reservoir effect of enterprise financialization on enterprise green innovation is more significant than the crowding out effect. • Internal control capability will reduce the inhibitory effect of corporate financialization on corporate green innovation. • Equity incentives will reduce the inhibitory effect of corporate financialization on corporate green innovation. This paper explores the relationship between corporate financialization and green innovation with a sample of A-share listed companies in China from 2012 to 2022. It is found that the crowding-out effect of corporate financialization on green innovation is greater than the reservoir effect, thus inhibiting green innovation. However, internal control capability and equity incentives can alleviate principal-agent conflicts and prompt corporate managers to reduce the negative impacts of financialization on green innovation in the long run, further revealing the decision-making process of how corporate managers weigh short-term financial interests against long-term innovation development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from Chinese listed firms for the period 2012-2018, we provide new evidence that the intensity of non-executive equity incentives can reduce the likelihood of internal control weaknesses and improve internal control effectiveness. We also find that internal control weaknesses are more likely to be remedied in firms that implement strong non-executive equity incentive polices. Besides, we document novel results that employee equity incentives for non-executives can optimise the internal environment, improve the internal supervision system, and thereby reduce the operational-level weaknesses of a company's internal controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from Chinese listed firms for the period 2012–2018, we provide new evidence that the intensity of non‐executive equity incentives can reduce the likelihood of internal control weaknesses and improve internal control effectiveness. We also find that internal control weaknesses are more likely to be remedied in firms that implement strong non‐executive equity incentive polices. Besides, we document novel results that employee equity incentives for non‐executives can optimise the internal environment, improve the internal supervision system, and thereby reduce the operational‐level weaknesses of a company’s internal controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between equity incentives and earnings management in the banking industry. By focusing on this regulated industry and using industry-specific earnings management proxies, we provide evidence on the impact of regulation on earnings management arising from chief executive officers’ equity incentives. We find that bank managers with high equity incentives are more likely to manage earnings, but only when capital ratios are closer to the minimums required by regulators. This finding indicates that, in the banking industry, potential regulatory intervention induces, rather than mitigates, earnings management arising from equity incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• Incentive characteristics have a significant impact on corporate innovation investment. • Stock options promote corporate innovation investment level only in growing and mature industries. • In the mature period of the industry, equity incentives of growing companies have a positive role in promoting innovation investment. Taking the industry life cycle as a perspective, this paper selects A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2016 to 2022 as a sample to explore the impact of listed companies' equity incentive characteristics on the level of corporate innovation. It is found that: incentive characteristics have a significant impact on corporate innovation investment, and stock options promote R&D investment more obviously than restricted stocks; stock options promote corporate innovation investment level only in growing and mature industries; in the mature period of the industry, equity incentives of growing companies have a positive role in promoting innovation investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the expanding global digital economy, the digital transformation of businesses has become a critical component of modern operations. This study investigates the relationship between executive incentives and the digital transformation in A-share-listed Chinese companies from 2011 to 2020. Using multi-period DID and linear regression models, we analyzed how equity and compensation incentives influence this transformation. We discovered an inverse U-shaped correlation between executive incentive intensity and corporate digital transformation. Additionally, the relationship between compensation incentives and digital transformation is initially non-positive but transitions to a non-linear positive association beyond a certain threshold. Our research also reveals that digital process innovation and digital business expansion mediate the relationship between executive motivation and digital transformation. These findings highlight the importance of appropriate executive rewards in fostering innovative thinking and advancing digital transformation. This study contributes to the understanding of the drivers and effects of digital transformation and the role of equity incentives in governance. It offers valuable insights for companies aiming to accelerate digital transformation, optimize industrial structure, and promote economic development. Based on this study, further research on this issue can be conducted in the future by refining the personality traits, educational background, and cognitive differences of executives., Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Hongbo Wang reports a relationship with 10.13039/501100004767University of Science and Technology Liaoning that includes: funding grants. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2024 The Authors.)

The widespread use of rank and file equity‐based compensation suggests that executives believe that rank and file employees can affect firm outcomes, and some research supports this view. If equity‐based incentives influence rank and file employees' productive efforts, they might also influence their earnings management decisions. We find that increases in rank and file employees' option‐based compensation—our proxy for equity‐based compensation—are associated with increases in earnings management and that this relation is attributable to real activities (as opposed to accrual) earnings management. Cross‐sectional tests indicate that the relation is stronger when rank and file option compensation is likely to generate greater performance incentives and attenuated in the presence of more intense monitoring. Finally, we explore the role of cash constraints and overvaluation as potential alternative explanations for this relation and find that neither accounts for our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Management equity incentives significantly affect banks' credit decisions. • The stronger the management equity incentives, the more bank loans firms obtain. • Management equity incentives significantly affect the maturity of bank loans. • Political connections weaken the impact of equity incentives on bank credit decisions. This paper analyzes the effect of political affiliation on the relationship between equity incentives and bank borrowing. Based on the data of listed companies in China that issued equity incentive announcements, we present evidence that: 1) Management equity incentives significantly increase firm's bank loans; 2) Compared to CEO stock ownership, the incentive model of implementing stock options or restricted stock has a more significant impact on corporate bank loans especially on obtaining short-term loans; and 4) Political connections is an informal mechanism affecting bank credit decisions and weakening the impact of equity incentives on bank loans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we utilize a panel dataset that covers 1245 listed companies which accomplished their IPO during 2006 to 2014 in China to investigate the impact of venture capital (VC) firms on executive compensation, equity incentive and pay-performance-sensitivity. We make several key findings: First, we find the presence of VCs can significantly raise the executive compensation. Second, high reputation VCs and private VCs increases the likelihood of granting executive equity incentives, whereas foreign VCs are significantly negatively related with executive equity incentive. Third, the pay-performance sensitivity of government VCs and foreign VCs is significant on stock return (RET) whereas insignificant on accounting performance (ROA). Moreover, the increasing VCs share in portfolio companies enhance the pay performance sensitivity on RET. Our results show that before VCs final exiting their post-IPO portfolio companies in China, VCs’ impact on executive compensation are more consistent with grandstanding theories and intending to provide higher cash compensation to encourage executives to raise the companies’ stock price, which is indicating VCs’ changing role from a coach into a speculator after the portfolio companies’ IPO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]