The Effect of Managerial Incentives and Earnings targets on Stickiness Cost

According to recent preceding studies, reduction of costs when sales decline, less than the increase in costs when the rate increases sales. This behavior is known as asymmetric costs to cost stickiness. With regard to meeting earnings targets, managers attempt to adjust operation resources when sales fall. This action probably results in cutting slack resources even though managers’ prediction concerning sale reduction is temporary. When there is an incentive to reduce the cost in the current period, the acceleration of removing slack resources is higher compared to the period when there is no incentive. Given this, tendency to meet earnings targets is more likely lead to reduce stickiness cost. The present study, covering 1384 to 1394, consist of 152 firms. The results of this study indicate that in the presence of incentive of earnings targets, cost stickiness cost is reduced by adjusting resources and through the reduction of sale the cost will decrease more aggressively. However, with the presence of incentive, consecutive periods will not affect stickiness cost significantly. In addition, managers’ optimistic (pessimistic) can be an important factor in increasing (decreasing) stickiness cost.