04/01/2022
By Mary Lou Kelly

The Accounting department at the Manning School of Business invites you to attend a doctoral dissertation proposal defense by Juwon Jang on “The role of relationship-specific risk on supplier firms’ non-GAAP Earnings Disclosure decision.”

Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Time: 11:15 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
Location: Pulichino Tong Business Center, Room 462
Dissertation Title: The role of relationship-specific risk on supplier firms’ non-GAAP Earnings Disclosure decision

Dissertation Committee Chair: Khondkar Karim, Ph.D., Accounting Department Chair, Professor, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Dissertation Committee Members:

  • Huiqi Gan, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Accounting, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Heeick Choi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Accounting, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Chi Zhang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Finance, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Abstract:
This dissertation investigates how suppliers’ relationship-specific investments (risk) influences their non-GAAP disclosure decision. There are two competing prior researches and arguments about the effect of relationship specificity on the suppliers’ public disclosure decisions. On the one hand, major customers have greater bargaining power and could demand their supplier firm to provide more public disclosure. On the other hand, when suppliers’ relationship-specific investments (risk) associated with their major customers are high, major customers could decrease customers’ overall requests for their supplier’s public information because of the lower costs of accessing the supplier firm’s private information. We provide additional evidence supporting private information channel facilitation hypothesis using non-GAAP earnings disclosure. Specifically, we find that the likelihood of non-GAAP earnings disclosure is negatively associated with relationship-specific investments, which supports the notion that enhanced private information flow between the supplier and major customers with high relationship-specific risk. Additionally, we find that this negative association is statistically significant only when a supplier and its major customer share a board of director’ member and an analyst.