Does value-based management facilitate managerial decision-making? An analysis of divestiture decisions

Abstract While recent studies indicate that value-based management (VBM) helps owners in aligning managerial interests (i.e., decision-influencing role), little evidence is provided for its support in managerial decision-making (i.e., decision-facilitating role). We investigate whether the depth of VBM implementation and contextual factors may determine VBM’s decision-facilitating role. We investigate our research question on a dataset of 1,774 divestitures by European firms between 2005 and 2016. Divestitures allow for the analysis of managerial decision-making in situations where managerial self-interest is less pronounced and, thus, where VBM’s decision-facilitating role can be differentiated from its decision-influencing role. Our empirical results indicate that VBM implementation down to the business-unit level is positively associated with divestiture returns, while we find no such effect if VBM implementation is limited to the corporate level. Further empirical tests indicate that this positive association is contingent on a high dispersion of the costs of capital across a firm’s business portfolio. In sum, our study indicates that VBM can facilitate managerial decision-making when firms consider its depth of implementation and firm-specific information needs.