Abstract
Working capital management routines of a large random sample of small companies in the UK are examined. Considerable variability in the take-up of 11 working capital management routines was detected. Principal components analysis and cluster analysis confirm the identification of four distinct ‘types’ of companies with regard to patterns of working capital management. The first three ‘types’ of companies focused upon cash management, stock or debtors routines respectively, whilst the fourth ‘type’ were less likely to take-up any working capital management routines. Influences on the amount and focus of working capital management are discussed. Multinomial logistic regression analysis suggests that the selected independent variables successfully discriminated between the four ‘types’ of companies. The results suggest that small companies focus only on areas of working capital management where they expect to improve marginal returns. The difficulties of establishing causality are highlighted and implications for academics, policy-makers and practitioners are reported.
Conclusions and implications
摘要
從英國(guó)小公司中大量的隨機(jī)抽樣，并檢查它們的運(yùn)營(yíng)資金管理模式。在運(yùn)用資金管理模式的11到工作程序中檢測(cè)出相當(dāng)大的變化。通過(guò)主成分析和聚類分析確認(rèn)得到了運(yùn)營(yíng)資金管理的四種不同類型模式。前三種類型把關(guān)注點(diǎn)分別放在現(xiàn)金管理、股票管理、債務(wù)管理上，但是第四種模式很少采取任何行動(dòng)在運(yùn)營(yíng)資金管理上。大多數(shù)學(xué)者討論資金數(shù)量和經(jīng)營(yíng)的重點(diǎn)的影響。多種Logistic回歸分析表明，成功獨(dú)立的選擇的自變量受到四種模式的歧視。最終結(jié)果顯示：小公司只有在把精力投放在運(yùn)營(yíng)資金集中管理方面才能獲得他們期望的邊際收益。建立因果關(guān)系的困難非常的突出，對(duì)學(xué)者、政策制定者和從業(yè)人員的影響也被披露出來(lái)。