Purpose With a particular emphasis on corporate strategies for innovation, the purpose of this paper is to examine how cost behaviour operates under conditions of strong competition in the retail industry. Design/methodology/approach Retail companies listed on the Indonesian, Singaporean and Malaysian capital markets are studied using the regression analysis method. Findings The findings of this study show the sticky behaviour of changes in the selling, general and administrative (SGA) costs when companies are under competitive pressure. When sales increase, SGA costs will increase; however, when sales decline, SGA costs evidently increase. This is especially true for retail companies which have suffered a decrease in their sales of less than 7 per cent, but experienced positive sales growth in the previous period. The suggestion would seem to be that competition leads to greater aggression and the contemporary real options theory bears this out. Research limitations/implications This study only uses data from retail companies listed on stock exchanges in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Practical implications The type of industry, the extent of the competition and the corporate strategy employed might influence the extent of cost stickiness. Therefore, the users of financial statements need to understand these factors. Originality/value While previous studies incorporated a variety of industries, this paper focuses on examining cost behaviour amid the competitive pressure from recent phenomena in the retail industry. The study provides empirical evidence for supporting the contemporary real options theory. When an industry experiences competition, investing in an uncertain situation will add value to a company, even if it causes sticky cost behaviour. This result contributes to the literature on cost behaviour and strategy management.

ABSTRACT

This study aims to examine whether managerial optimism and profit-based incentives affect cost behavior asymmetry, especially cost stickiness. Differ from previous literature on cost stickiness, the researchers use an experimental 2 × 2 betweenwithin subjects factorial design. This design allows us to use data related to cost management specifically, not just in general term as in studies using archival data from public financial statements. Our study results reaffirm cost stickiness literature. This study focuses on experiments among accounting students who are not knowledgeable about cost behavior asymmetry. Even though our 71 student participants know only the symmetric cost behavior theory, when presented with a scenario related to sales prospects and information on profit-based incentives, the results of this study show otherwise. When participants are more optimistic and profit-based incentives have been achieved, the level of cost stickiness is also higher.

Apakah Cost Stickiness merupakan Sinyal Buruk dari Perspektif Catur Marga? Penelitian ini berupaya untuk mengupas deter minan asimetri perilaku biaya dari perspektif Hindu Weda, yaitu catur marga. Kajian literatur digunakan sebagai metode. Penelitian ini menyim pulkan bahwa ketika mengambil keputusan, manajer mempertimbang kan belas kasih (bhakti marga), pengetahuan yang dimiliki (jnana marga), upaya untuk berbuat baik (karma marga), dan pengendalian diri atas kepentingan pribadi (raja marga). Perilaku biaya sangat dipengaruhi oleh kebijakan yang dibuat oleh manajer. Kebijakan tersebut terkait de ngan pengelolaan sumber dayanya, terutama ketika menghadapi per mintaan yang menurun.

This research aims to investigate variables affecting board size in public companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) and optimum board size which maximizes firm’s value measured by Price to Earnings Ratio (PER), Price to Book Value (PBV), and Tobin’s Q. Using 4,379 observations from 2007 to 2015 of IDX data, this research finds that liquidity, solvability, activity, and profitability affect board size significantly in quadratic form. In addition, it is suggested that the optimum board size for small companies is four directors while the size for big companies is six to seven directors.

Contemporary points of view have posited that cost behavior is asymmetrical and tends to be sticky. The purpose of this study is to determine the development of cost behavior research, especially about cost stickiness, in reputable international journals. There are 142 articles that meet the criteria which have been obtained from the Scopus database. Bibliometric analysis has been performed with the help of the VOSviewer application. The results of the analysis show that research related to cost stickiness has increased in the last decade. The cost stickiness research consists of the following clusters: 1) the health industry; 2) labor costs; 3) social, environmental and sustainability issues; 4) corporate governance; 5) specific problems in manufacturing; and 6) leadership characteristics. The topics of research on cost stickiness that are still being researched are related to the role of the environmental community, business strategy, and the role of managerial leadership. In this analysis, the authors also show that articles that treat cost stickiness as an independent variable are limited. Based on the results of this analysis, we provide suggestions regarding opportunities for research on cost stickiness in the future.

The aim of this paper is to review the role of board size as part of the corporate governance system. This paper discusses one aspect of corporate governance, namely, boards, in the Indonesian context. Using the literature review method, this paper explores factors that need to be considered to determine the optimal number of boards, especially in Indonesia. We explore some determinants of board size, such as complexity and leverage, ownership structure, and financial ratio support. The results reveal that an understanding of the differences found in the two-tier board model helps us understand that the different functions of the board of commissioners and the board of directors require different test treatments from countries that adhere to one-tier systems. A review of the relationship between board size and company performance is expected to provide the corporate governance literature with insights into optimizing the sizes of boards that can improve company performance, both in terms of boards of commissioners and boards of directors. This paper proposes the simultaneous testing of board size's relationship with company performance. The results of this study are expected to make a more real contribution about the effect of board size on company performance.

<em>This study aimed to determine the effect of return on equity (ROE) and leverage of the bonus shares in companies listed on the Stock Exchange in 2000-2015. The total samples that used ware 33 observations based on saturated samples method. The analysis technique used multiple linear regression analysis. The results showed ROE does not had an effect on bonus shares that means the company's decision to publish bonus shares does not depend on the size of ROE, leverage had a positive effect on bonus shares that shows if the company’s risk increased, so the possibility of the company to publish bonus shares will higher than cash dividends in the future.</em>