The impact of business strategy on corporate cash policy

The purpose of this study is to explore the association between cash holdings and business strategy for nonfinancial and nonutility US firms over the period from 1970 to 2016.

The authors have used Miles and Snow's (1978, 2003) theoretical background and followed Bentley et al. (2013) to construct a strategy index. Thus, the authors have distinguished two extreme corporate strategies, prospectors and defenders, based on a firm's resource allocation and investment behavior patterns. Following the methodology of Bates et al. (2009), the authors have used the multiple regression analysis to explore the relationship between business strategy and corporate cash holdings.

The empirical results show that business strategy is positively related to cash holdings. Prospectors are more likely to hold higher cash levels than defenders. Furthermore, the authors have found that cash holding's speed of adjustment (SOA) is slower for prospectors than for defenders, suggesting that business strategy influences cash holding's trend. Interestingly, the results show that the market value of cash increases significantly only for the firms that pursue a defender strategy.

The results of this work have valuable implications for researchers, by unveiling the relationship between corporate strategy and firm's cash holdings. This study, however, is limited to a sample of US firms; empirical evidence based on international samples of firms would add value to the current literature.

The findings could be useful to financial managers and investment strategists, who seek to maximize firm value through the adoption of an effective liquidity policy. What is more, this study provides support for the view that strategic choice and optimal cash management are of great importance for firms' market value.

This study enriches the knowledge of business strategy's impact on financing policy of firms and contributes to the empirical literature of cash holdings' determinants. In addition, it complements previous studies on US firms by documenting the effect of business strategy on the SOA in cash holdings and firm value.