Incerteza, flexibilidade operacional e decisões corporativas

Abstract

This thesis aimed to analyze the moderating effect of operational flexibility on the relationship between uncertainty and corporate decisions. The literature establishes that uncertainty can have adverse effects on investment decisions, financing and distribution of dividends, as companies tend to reduce their level of investment in periods of uncertainty, given the irreversibility of capital and the value of the option to wait. At the same time, there is a greater information asymmetry between economic agents, which will demand a higher risk premium, that is, the cost of capital, encouraging the reduction of indebtedness, debt maturity, changing the financing hierarchy and, consequently, generating a reduction in dividends as a way of preserving resources to amortize adverse risks. However, it is possible that the adverse effects of uncertainty on corporate decisions are not universal for all organizations. If companies have the operational flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions, they may be less impacted by the effects of uncertainty. Operational flexibility was calculated based on the model developed by Hackbarth and Johnson (2015), derived from a neoclassical approach to the real options model. For uncertainty, eight proxies were used, which were grouped into three types of uncertainties: macroeconomic, political and firm-specific. The study sample consisted of non-financial companies with data available for the period from 1999 to 2020. The results showed that companies with operational flexibility had a lower level of investment, in a period of uncertainty, when compared to inflexible companies, refuting the H1 of this survey. The second hypothesis and its complementary H2A analyzed the relationship between uncertainty, operational flexibility and indebtedness and debt maturity decisions. Thus, it was observed that flexible companies, in a period of macroeconomic and firm-specific uncertainty, had a lower level of leverage and debt maturity, rejecting H2 and H2A. In addition, they obtained a lower cost of third-party capital, not rejecting the fourth hypothesis of this thesis. Regarding the financing hierarchy, it was found that, in periods of macroeconomic and firm uncertainty, inflexible companies behaved more closely to the pecking order theory, refuting the research's H3. Finally, the results showed that, in a period of uncertainty, operationally flexible companies distribute less dividends than inflexible companies, rejecting the H5 of this thesis. In general, it is noted that flexible companies, in a period of uncertainty, presented a different behavior from inflexible companies, confirming the importance of this characteristic in studies on uncertainty and corporate decisions. Additional analyzes found that these results, for the most part, are robust to alternative proxies of operational flexibility and political uncertainty, as well as to the heterogeneous characteristics of companies, namely: size, operating cash flow and financial constraint. It is noteworthy that the institutional characteristics of the Brazilian market can be a justification for the results observed in this research.