Strategic Satisficing? A Behavioral-Agency Perspective on Stock Repurchase Program Announcements

Executives confront potentially conflicting pressures - to maximize shareholder wealth in the long term and to appease shareholders in the near term. Because near-term pressures must be addressed to preserve tenure and to realize the potential benefits of long-term strategies, executives are increasingly likely to rely on shareholder mollification initiatives. We develop a behavioral-agency theoretical framework to study how stock repurchase programs are used to help top managers appease shareholders. Analysis of 250 large U.S. firms suggests that stock repurchase programs are variously a function of information asymmetry, risky stock-based incentives, and performance expectations