Introduction

This volume of Advances in Management Accounting (AIMA) begins with a paper by Clancy and Román on the impact of firm size on the productivity of resources. The authors empirically investigate the relationship between firm size and resource productivity to assess whether the productivity of resources (value in use) and their underlying value at sale (value in sale) varies with firms’ size. They use seemingly unrelated regression of revenues and equity values on assets and employees for a large sample over a wide time period and across all industries. They compare companies that are growing, declining, or continuing in size relative to their industry. With some variability on growth, the paper finds that smaller companies hold more productive resources based on their capacity to generate more revenues per unit of resources (assets) relative to large companies. Further, as predicted, a firm’s workforce has productive value in use, but limited value after a firm’s sale as measured by equity values. Collectively, the findings suggest that firm size matters in influencing resource productivity, plus a workforce has productive value in use, but low value in sale.