Employees Skill and Sticky Wages

Journal of Accounting Advances, (2020) 12(1): 1-27
DOI: 10.22099/JAA.2021.40315.2123
 
 
 
 
 
Journal of Accounting Advances (JAA)
Journal homepage: www.jaa.shirazu.ac.ir/?lang=en
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Employees Skill and Sticky Wages
Abbas Parsafar¹, Reza Hesarzadeh^2*, Behzad Kardan³
 
1- MSc. of Management Accounting, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran, Abbas.parsafar@mail.um.ac.ir
2- Associate Professor of Accounting, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran, Hesarzadeh@um.ac.ir
3- Assistant professor of Accounting, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran, Kardan@um.ac.ir
 
 
 
 
 
 
ARTICLE INF
 
 
ABSTRACT
 
 
 
 
 
Received:  2021-04-11
Accepted: 2021-08-23
 
 
 
The issue of asymmetric cost behavior has attracted much attention in management accounting literature. According to the economic theory of sticky costs, sources adjustment costs, especially employees adjustment costs, is one of the main reasons for this asymmetry. Previous studies attempting to empirically examine this theory face limitations. Therefore, this study takes a new look at this theory by using Employees Skills index for Employees adjustment costs. Theoretically, higher levels of employees’ skills are argument to increase wages stickiness. To prove this statement, the companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during the years 1391 to 1398 were examined. The results show that the level of employees skills has a positive effect on the stickiness of wages, which is consistent with the hypothesis of the research. Also, the results show that wages costs in highly skilled firms have sticky behavior, and in low skill firms, employees have no stickiness. Additional analyzes and sensitivity tests show that the results are robust enough.
 
 
 
 
 
* Corresponding author:
Reza Hesarzadeh, Associate Professor of Accounting, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
 
Email: Hesarzadeh@um.ac.ir
 
 
 
 
 
1- Introduction
The issue of asymmetric cost behavior, also known as "cost stickiness", has attracted much attention in the management accounting literature. Asymmetric cost behavior arises from management decisions to adjust resources in response to activity level changes (Anderson, Banker & Janakiraman, 2003; Banker, Byzalov, Fang & Liang, 2018). According to the economic theory of sticky costs, employees’ dismissal costs are one of the main reasons for such asymmetry. Despite the importance of adjustment costs, especially employees’ dismissal costs in cost stickiness theory, few studies have been able to empirically examine the relationship between employees’ dismissal costs and cost stickiness, because it is difficult to identify an empirical indicator for adjustment costs (Banker, Byzalov & Chen, 2013; Golden, Mashruwala & Pevzner, 2020). Therefore, in this research, "employees’ skills" is considered as an index for employees’ dismissal costs and its impact is investigated on the behavior of wages costs.
 
2- Hypothesis
H₁: With the skills level of employees increases, the severity of sticky wages increases.
H₂: The intensity of Sticky wages among highly skilled firms is more.
 
 
Methods
 
The statistical population of this research includes all firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) that have been active in TSE during the years 2011-2020. Required data from the report of the activities of the board of directors, financial statements and explanatory notes along with the financial statements available in the stock exchange information system (called “CODAL”) and the website of the Statistics Center of Iran were collected manually.
The independent variable in this research is the skill level of employees. In this research, following the guidelines of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08), employees’ skills level is measured using these components: per capita training, work experience and employees education level.
The dependent variable in this research is wages stickiness. Anderson et al. (2003) present an empirical model (ABJ) that allows empirical examination of costs behavior.
In this research, following the cost stickiness literature, control variables include: GDP growth, successive decrease in revenue, asset intensity and employees’ intensity (see e.g., Anderson et al., 2003; Dierynck, Landsman & Renders, 2012; Chen, Lu & Sougiannis, 2012; Banker, Byzalov and Chen, 2013; Venieris, Naoum & Vlismas, 2015; Golden et al., 2020).
 
Results
 
The research hypothesis was tested using the ordinary least squares regression model, taking into account the constant effects of year and firm. To solve the problem of variance heterogeneity and autocorrelation, robust regression of standard errors method (clustering standard errors at the firm level) was used. Moreover, the variance inflation factor (VIF) was used to identify collinearity.
The results show that the level of employees skills has a positive effect on the stickiness of wages, which is consistent with the hypothesis of the research. Also, the results show that wages costs in highly skilled firms have sticky behavior, and in low skilled firms, employees have no stickiness.
 
 
Discussion and Conclusion
 
This research examined the impact of employees’ skills on the stickiness of wages costs in firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The results showed that the employees’ skills level has a positive impact on the stickiness of wages costs, which is in conformity with the research hypothesis. Furthermore, by examining the behavior of wages costs among firms with high and low levels of skills of employees, it was found that wages costs for firms with highly skilled employees show a sticky behavior. Meanwhile, wages cost behavior for low skill firms is anti-sticky. The results of this research are in line with the findings of research conducted by Anderson et al. (2003), Banker et al. (2013), and Golden et al. (2020).