Suraj Srinivasan
There are 3 articles for this faculty member.
About Faculty in this Article:
Suraj Srinivasan is an associate professor in the Accounting and Management unit at Harvard Business School.
Perspectives from the Boardroom—2009
| Authors: | Jay W. Lorsch, Joseph L. Bower, Clayton S. Rose, and Suraj Srinivasan |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 9, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Chief executives and regulators have been blamed for the current economic crisis, but in some ways what is surprising is that boards have generally escaped notice. Clearly the experience of corporate boards in the downturn has not been explored. To understand what transpired in the boardrooms of complex companies, and to offer a prescription to improve board effectiveness, eight senior faculty members of the HBS Corporate Governance Initiative talked with 45 prominent directors about what has happened to their companies and why. These directors, who serve on the boards of financial institutions and other complex companies, were asked two broad questions: How well did their boards function before the recession? And, what do they believe should be improved as they look to the future?
This white paper [PDF] first explains how the interviewees characterize the strengths of their boards, then examines in depth six areas in which they identified shortcomings or needs for improvement: 1) clarifying the board's role; 2) acquiring better information and deeper knowledge of the company; 3) maintaining a sound relationship with management; 4) providing oversight of company strategy; 5) assuring management development and succession; 6) improving risk management. Finally, the paper discusses two issues that appeared not to trouble the interviewees but that the public feels are important: executive compensation and the relationship between the board and shareholders. This paper was written by Jay Lorsch with the assistance of Joseph Bower, Clayton Rose, and Suraj Srinivasan. The interviews were conducted by Joseph Bower, Srikant Datar, Raymond Gilmartin, Stephen Kaufman, Rakesh Khurana, Jay Lorsch, and Clayton Rose.
Published in 2008
Signaling Firm Performance Through Financial Statement Presentation: An Analysis Using Special Items
| Authors: | Edward J. Riedl and Suraj Srinivasan |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 24, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Do managers' presentation decisions within their financial statements reflect informational motivations (that is, revealing the underlying economics of the firm) or opportunistic motivations (that is, attempts to bias perceptions of firm performance)? The authors examine managers' choices to present special items (such as write-offs and restructuring charges) separately on the income statement rather than aggregated in other line items with disclosure only in the footnotes. Prior research suggests that managers engage in opportunistic reporting in other presentation decisions, and that managers' presentation decisions on the financial statement affects users' judgments. The distinction also matters because current changes in reporting standards are likely to increase the occurrence of "nonrecurring" type charges similar to special items, such as fair value changes.
CEO and CFO Career Penalties to Missing Quarterly Analysts Forecasts
| Authors: | Rick Mergenthaler, Shiva Rajgopal, and Suraj Srinivasan |
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| Published: | September 24, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | August 2008, revised June 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
(Previous title: "CEO and CFO Career Consequences to Missing Quarterly Earnings Benchmarks.") This paper investigates whether the failure to meet quarterly earnings benchmarks such as the analysts' consensus forecast matters to CEO and CFO careers, after controlling for both operating and stock return performance and the magnitude of the earnings "surprise" revealed at the earnings announcement. In particular, it evaluates a comprehensive set of career consequences such as the impact on compensation, in the form of bonus and equity grants, and the dismissal of both the CEO and the CFO, conditioned on the failure to meet quarterly earnings benchmarks.
