企业资金管理中英文对照外文翻译文献(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)An Analysis of Working Capital Management Results Across IndustriesAbstractFirms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the fund s available for expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied upin current assets. We provide insights into the performance of surv eyed firms across key components of working capital management by usi ng the CFO magazine’s annual Working CapitalManagement Survey. We discover that significant differences exist b etween industries in working capital measures across time.In addition.w e discover that these measures for working capital change significantl y within industries across time.IntroductionThe importance of efficient working capital management is indisputa ble. Working capital is the difference between resources in cash or readily convertible into cash (Current Assets) and organizational commi tments for which cash will soon be required (Current Liabilities). Th e objective of working capital management is to maintain the optimum balance of each of the working capital components. Business viabilit y relies on the ability to effectively manage receivables. inventory.a nd payables. Firms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied up in current assets. Much managerial effort is expended in b ringing non-optimal levels of current assets and liabilities back towa rd optimal levels. An optimal level would be one in which a balance is achieved between risk and efficiency.A recent example of business attempting to maximize working capita l management is the recurrent attention being given to the applicatio n of Six Sigma®methodology. Six S igma®methodologies help companies measure and ensure quality in all areas of the enterprise. When used to identify and rectify discrepancies.inefficiencies and erroneous tra nsactions in the financial supply chain. Six Sigma®reduces Days Sale s Outstanding (DSO).accelerates the payment cycle.improves customer sati sfaction and reduces the necessary amount and cost of working capital needs. There appear to be many success stories including Jennifertwon’s(2002) report of a 15percent decrease in days that sales are outstanding.resulting in an increased cash flow of approximately $2 million at Thibodaux Regional Medical Cenrer.Furthermore bad debts declined from 3.4millin to $6000000.However.Waxer’s(2003)study of multiple firms employing Six Sig ma®finds that it is really a “get rich slow”technique with a r ate of return hovering in the 1.2 – 4.5 percent range.Even in a business using Six Sigma®methodology. an “optimal”level of working capital management needs to be identified. Industry factors may impa ct firm credit policy.inventory management.and bill-paying activities. S ome firms may be better suited to minimize receivables and inventory. while others maximize payables. Another aspect of “optimal”is the extent to which poor financial results can be tied to sub-optimal pe rformance.Fortunately.these issues are testable with data published by CFO magazine. which claims to be the source of “tools and informati on for the financial executive.”and are the subject of this resear ch.In addition to providing mean and variance values for the working capital measures and the overall metric.two issues will be addressed in this research. One research question is. “are firms within a p articular industry clustered together at consistent levels of working capital measures?For instance.are firms in one industry able to quickl y transfer sales into cash.while firms from another industry tend to have high sales levels for the particular level of inventory . The other research question is. “does working capital management perform ance for firms within a given industry change from year-to-year?”The following section presents a brief literature review.Next.the r esearch method is described.including some information about the annual Working Capital Management Survey published by CFO magazine. Findings are then presented and conclusions are drawn.Related LiteratureThe importance of working capital management is not new to the f inance literature. Over twenty years ago. Largay and Stickney (1980) reported that the then-recent bankruptcy of W.T. Grant. a nationwide chain of department stores.should have been anticipated because the co rporation had been running a deficit cash flow from operations for e ight of the last ten years of its corporate life.As part of a stud y of the Fortune 500s financial management practices. Gilbert and Rei chert (1995) find that accounts receivable management models are used in 59 percent of these firms to improve working capital projects.wh ile inventory management models were used in 60 percent of the compa nies.More recently. Farragher. Kleiman and Sahu (1999) find that 55 p ercent of firms in the S&P Industrial index complete some form of a cash flow assessment. but did not present insights regarding account s receivable and inventory management. or the variations of any curre nt asset accounts or liability accounts across industries.Thus.mixed ev idence exists concerning the use of working capital management techniq ues.Theoretical determination of optimal trade credit limits are the s ubject of many articles over the years (e.g. Schwartz 1974; Scherr 1 996).with scant attention paid to actual accounts receivable management.Across a limited sample. Weinraub and Visscher (1998) observe a tend ency of firms with low levels of current ratios to also have low l evels of current liabilities. Simultaneously investigating accounts rece ivable and payable issues.Hill. Sartoris.and Ferguson (1984) find diffe rences in the way payment dates are defined. Payees define the date of payment as the date payment is received.while payors view paymen t as the postmark date.Additional WCM insight across firms.industries.a nd time can add to this body of research.Maness and Zietlow (2002. 51. 496) presents two models of value creation that incorporate effective short-term financial management acti vities.However.these models are generic models and do not consider uni que firm or industry influences. Maness and Zietlow discuss industry influences in a short paragraph that includes the observation that. “An industry a company is located in may have more influence on th at company’s fortunes than overall GNP”(2002. 507).In fact. a car eful review of this 627-page textbook finds only sporadic information on actual firm levels of WCM dimensions.virtually nothing on industr y factors except for some boxed items with titles such as. “Should a Retailer Offer an In-House Credit Card”(128) and nothing on WC M stability over time. This research will attempt to fill this void by investigating patterns related to working capital measures within industries and illustrate differences between industries across time.An extensive survey of library and Internet resources provided ver y few recent reports about working capital management. The most relev ant set of articles was Weisel and Bradley’s (2003) article on cash flow management and one of inventory control as a result of effect ive supply chain management by Hadley (2004).Research Method The CFO RankingsThe first annual CFO Working Capital Survey. a joint project with REL Consultancy Group.was published in the June 1997 issue of CFO (Mintz and Lezere 1997). REL is a London. England-based management co nsulting firm specializing in working capital issues for its global l ist of clients. The original survey reports several working capital b enchmarks for public companies using data for 1996. Each company is ranked against its peers and also against the entire field of 1.000 companies. REL continues to update the original information on an a nnual basis.REL uses the “cash flow from operations”value located on firm cash flow statements to estimate cash conversion efficiency (CCE). T his value indicates how well a company transforms revenues into cash flow. A “days of working capital”(DWC) value is based on the d ollar amount in each of the aggregate.equally-weighted receivables.inven tory.and payables accounts. The “days of working capital”(DNC) repr esents the time period between purchase of inventory on acccount fromvendor until the sale to the customer.the collection of the receiva bles. and payment receipt.Thus.it reflects the companys ability to fin ance its core operations with vendor credit. A detailed investigation of WCM is possible because CFO also provides firm and industry val ues for days sales outstanding (A/R).inventory turnover.and days payabl es outstanding (A/P).Research FindingsAverage and Annual Working Capital Management Performance Working capital management component definitions and average values for the entire 1996 –2000 period .Across the nearly 1.000 firms in the survey.cash flow from operations. defined as cash flow from operations divided by sales and referred to as “cash conversion ef ficiency”(CCE).averages 9.0 percent.Incorporating a 95 percent confide nce interval. CCE ranges from 5.6 percent to 12.4 percent. The days working capital (DWC). defined as the sum of receivables and invent ories less payables divided by daily sales.averages 51.8 days and is very similar to the days that sales are outstanding (50.6).because the inventory turnover rate (once every 32.0 days) is similar to the number of days that payables are outstanding (32.4 days).In all ins tances.the standard deviation is relatively small.suggesting that these working capital management variables are consistent across CFO report s.Industry Rankings on Overall Working Capital Management Perfo rmanceCFO magazine provides an overall working capital ranking for firms in its ing the following equation:Industry-based differences in overall working capital management are presented for the twenty-s ix industries that had at least eight companies included in the rank ings each year.In the typical year. CFO magazine ranks 970 companies during this period. Industries are listed in order of the mean ove rall CFO ranking of working capital performance. Since the best avera ge ranking possible for an eight-company industry is 4.5 (this assume s that the eight companies are ranked one through eight for the ent ire survey). it is quite obvious that all firms in the petroleum in dustry must have been receiving very high overall working capital man agement rankings.In fact.the petroleum industry is ranked first in CCE and third in DWC (as illustrated in Table 5 and discussed later i n this paper).Furthermore.the petroleum industry had the lowest standar d deviation of working capital rankings and range of working capital rankings. The only other industry with a mean overall ranking less than 100 was the Electric & Gas Utility industry.which ranked secon d in CCE and fourth in DWC. The two industries with the worst work ing capital rankings were Textiles and Apparel. Textiles rank twenty-s econd in CCE and twenty-sixth in DWC. The apparel industry ranks twenty-third and twenty-fourth in the two working capital measures ConclusionsThe research presented here is based on the annual ratings of wo rking capital management published in CFO magazine. Our findings indic ate a consistency in how industries “stack up”against each other over time with respect to the working capital measures.However.the wor king capital measures themselves are not static (i.e.. averages of wo rking capital measures across all firms change annually); our results indicate significant movements across our entire sample over time. O ur findings are important because they provide insight to working cap ital performance across time. and on working capital management across industries. These changes may be in explained in part by macroecono mic factors Changes in interest rates.rate of innovation.and competitio n are likely to impact working capital management. As interest rates rise.there would be less desire to make payments early.which would stretch accounts payable.accounts receivable.and cash accounts. The ra mifications of this study include the finding of distinct levels of WCM measures for different industries.which tend to be stable over ti me. Many factors help to explain this discovery. The improving econom y during the period of the study may have resulted in improved turn over in some industries.while slowing turnover may have been a signal of troubles ahead. Our results should be interpreted cautiously. Our study takes places over a short time frame during a generally impr oving market. In addition. the survey suffers from survivorship bias –only the top firms within each industry are ranked each year and the composition of those firms within the industry can change annua lly.Further research may take one of two lines.First.there could bea study of whether stock prices respond to CFO magazine’s publication of working capital management rating.Second,there could be a study of which if any of the working capital management components relate to share price performance.Given our results,there studies need to take industry membership into consideration when estimating stock price reaction to working capital management performance.对整个行业中营运资金管理的研究格雷格Filbeck.Schweser学习计划托马斯M克鲁格.威斯康星大学拉克罗斯摘要:企业能够降低融资成本或者尽量减少绑定在流动资产上的成立基金数额来用于扩大现有的资金。