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American Journal of Business

Emerald Article: An Analysis of Working Capital Management Results Across


Industries
Greg Filbeck, Thomas M. Krueger

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Maynard E. Rafuse, (1996),"Working capital management: an urgent need to refocus", Management Decision, Vol. 34 Iss: 2 pp. 59 - 63
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An Analysis of Working Capital Management Results


Across Industries
Greg Filbeck, Schweser Study Program
Thomas M. Krueger, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Abstract
Firms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase
the funds available for expansion by minimizing the
amount of funds tied up in current assets. We provide
insights into the performance of surveyed firms across key
components of working capital management by using the
CFO magazines annual Working Capital Management
Survey. We discover that significant differences exist
between industries in working capital measures across time.
In addition, we discover that these measures for working
capital change significantly within industries across time.

Introduction

The importance of efficient working capital management


(WCM) is indisputable. Working capital is the difference
between resources in cash or readily convertible into cash
(Current Assets) and organizational commitments for
which cash will soon be required (Current Liabilities). The
objective of working capital management is to maintain
the optimum balance of each of the working capital
components. Business viability relies on the ability to
effectively manage receivables, inventory, and payables.
Firms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the
funds available for expansion by minimizing the amount of
funds tied up in current assets. Much managerial effort is
expended in bringing non-optimal levels of current assets
and liabilities back toward optimal levels. An optimal level
would be one in which a balance is achieved between risk
and efficiency.
A recent example of business attempting to maximize
working capital management is the recurrent attention being
given to the application of Six Sigma methodology. Six
Sigma methodologies help companies measure and ensure
quality in all areas of the enterprise. When used to identify
and rectify discrepancies, inefficiencies and erroneous
transactions in the financial supply chain, Six Sigma
reduces Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), accelerates the
payment cycle, improves customer satisfaction and reduces
the necessary amount and cost of working capital needs.
There appear to be many success stories, including Jennifer
Townes (2002) report of a 15 percent decrease in days that

sales are outstanding, resulting in an increased cash flow of


approximately $2 million at Thibodaux Regional Medical
Center. Furthermore, bad debts declined from $3.4 million
to $600,000. However, Waxers (2003) study of multiple
firms employing Six Sigma finds that it is really a get rich
slow technique with a rate of return hovering in the 1.2
4.5 percent range.


Even in a business using Six Sigma
methodology, an optimal level of working
capital management needs to be identified.

Even in a business using Six Sigma methodology, an


optimal level of working capital management needs to be
identified. Industry factors may impact firm credit policy,
inventory management, and bill-paying activities. Some
firms may be better suited to minimize receivables and
inventory, while others maximize payables. Another aspect
of optimal is the extent to which poor financial results can
be tied to sub-optimal performance. Fortunately, these issues
are testable with data published by CFO magazine (Mintz
and Lazere 1997; Corman 1998; Mintz 1999; Myers 2000;
Fink 2001), which claims to be the source of tools and
information for the financial executive, and are the subject
of this research.
In addition to providing mean and variance values for
the working capital measures and the overall metric, two
issues will be addressed in this research. One research
question is, are firms within a particular industry clustered
together at consistent levels of working capital measures?
For instance, are firms in one industry able to quickly
transfer sales into cash (i.e., have low accounts receivable
levels), while firms from another industry tend to have high
sales levels for the particular level of inventory (i.e., a high
inventory turnover). The other research question is, does
working capital management performance for firms within a
given industry change from year-to-year?
The following section presents a brief literature review.
Next, the research method is described, including some
information about the annual Working Capital Management
Survey published by CFO magazine. Findings are then
presented and conclusions are drawn.
Mid-American Journal of Business, Vol. 20, No. 2

11

Filbeck and Krueger

Table 1
Industries Represented in CFOs Working
Capital Management Surveys

Aerospace
Apparel
Beverages
Building Materials
Chemicals
Conglomerates
Electric & Gas Utility
Electrical Equipment
Food
Food & Drug Stores
Food Services
Forest & Paper Products
Furniture
General Merchandisers
Health Care
Health-Care Equipment

Household Products
Metal Products
Metals
Motor Vehicles & Parts
Office Equipment
Petroleum
Pharmaceuticals
Publishing & Printing
Recreational
Scientific Equipment
Semiconductors
Specialty Retailers
Telecommunications
Textiles
Transportation
Wholesale Trade

Related Literature
The importance of working capital management is
not new to the finance literature. Over twenty years ago,
Largay and Stickney (1980) reported that the then-recent
bankruptcy of W.T. Grant, a nationwide chain of department
stores, should have been anticipated because the corporation
had been running a deficit cash flow from operations for
eight of the last ten years of its corporate life. As part
of a study of the Fortune 500s financial management

practices, Gilbert and Reichert (1995) find that accounts


receivable management models are used in 59 percent
of these firms to improve working capital projects, while
inventory management models were used in 60 percent of
the companies. More recently, Farragher, Kleiman and Sahu
(1999) find that 55 percent of firms in the S&P Industrial
index complete some form of a cash flow assessment, but
did not present insights regarding accounts receivable and
inventory management, or the variations of any current
asset accounts or liability accounts across industries. Thus,
mixed evidence exists concerning the use of working capital
management techniques.
Theoretical determination of optimal trade credit
limits are the subject of many articles over the years (e.g.,
Schwartz 1974; Scherr 1996), with scant attention paid to
actual accounts receivable management. Across a limited
sample, Weinraub and Visscher (1998) observe a tendency
of firms with low levels of current ratios to also have low
levels of current liabilities. Simultaneously investigating
accounts receivable and payable issues, Hill, Sartoris,
and Ferguson (1984) find differences in the way payment
dates are defined. Payees define the date of payment as the
date payment is received, while payors view payment as
the postmark date. Additional WCM insight across firms,
industries, and time can add to this body of research.
Maness and Zietlow (2002, 51, 496) presents two
models of value creation that incorporate effective shortterm financial management activities. However, these
models are generic models and do not consider unique firm
or industry influences. Maness and Zietlow discuss industry

Table 2
Working Capital Management Component Definitions and Averages
Component

Equation

Cash Conversion Efficiency (CCE)

(Cash flow from operations) / Sales

Days Working Capital (DWC)

(Receivables + Inventory Payables) / (Sales/365)

Overall Ranking

(Highest overall CCE Company CCE) / (Highest overall CCE Lowest overall CCE) x
(Lowest overall DWC Company DWC) / Lowest overall DWC Highest overall DWC)

Average Value
(Standard Deviation)
9.0 percent
(1.7 percent)
51.8 days
(4.7 days)

Other Related Variables


Those listed below, although reported in CFO, are not part of the overall ranking criteria (only the two meaures listed above are included in overall rank).
Days Sales Outstanding

Accounts Receivable / (Sales/365)

Inventory Turns

Inventory / (Sales/365)

Days Payables Outstanding

Accounts Payable / (Sales/365)

12

Mid-American Journal of Business, Vol. 20, No. 2

50.6 days
(1.3 days)
11.0X/year or 32.4 days
(2.5 days)
32.0 days
(2.8 days)

Filbeck and Krueger

influences in a short paragraph that includes the observation


that, An industry a company is located in may have more
influence on that companys fortunes than overall GNP
(2002, 507). In fact, a careful review of this 627-page
textbook finds only sporadic information on actual firm
levels of WCM dimensions, virtually nothing on industry
factors except for some boxed items with titles such as,
Should a Retailer Offer an In-House Credit Card (128)
and nothing on WCM stability over time. This research will
attempt to fill this void by investigating patterns related to
working capital measures within industries and illustrate
differences between industries across time.
An extensive survey of library and Internet resources
provided very few recent reports about working capital
management. The most relevant set of articles was Weisel
and Bradleys (2003) article on cash flow management and
one of inventory control as a result of effective supply chain
management by Hadley (2004).

measures of working capital efficiency identified by CFO


magazine. Classical analysis of variance is used to address
issues of industry rank differences within years. Thus,

Research Method

Research Findings

The CFO Rankings


The first annual CFO Working Capital Survey, a joint
project with REL Consultancy Group, was published in the
June 1997 issue of CFO (Mintz and Lezere 1997). REL
is a London, England-based management consulting firm
specializing in working capital issues for its global list of
clients. The original survey reports several working capital
benchmarks for public companies using data for 1996. Each
company is ranked against its peers and also against the
entire field of 1,000 companies. REL continues to update the
original information on an annual basis. The industries that
include at least eight companies with complete information
over the 1996-2000 period are listed in Table 1.
REL uses the cash flow from operations value located
on firm cash flow statements to estimate cash conversion
efficiency (CCE). This value indicates how well a company
transforms revenues into cash flow. A days of working
capital (DWC) value is based on the dollar amount in each
of the aggregate, equally-weighted receivables, inventory,
and payables accounts. The days of working capital
(DNC) represents the time period between purchase of
inventory on acccount from vendor until the sale to the
customer, the collection of the receivables, and payment
receipt. Thus, it reflects the companys ability to finance its
core operations with vendor credit. A detailed investigation
of WCM is possible because CFO also provides firm and
industry values for days sales outstanding (A/R), inventory
turnover, and days payables outstanding (A/P). More
information on how these values are calculated is presented
in Table 2. Prior to 2002, CFO also provided an overall
WCM management ranking based on an equally-weighted
combination of CCE and DWC.
Statistical Techniques
Our first hypothesis is that statistically significant
differences exist among industries with respect to the

Average and Annual Working Capital Management


Performance
Working capital management component definitions and
average values for the entire 1996 2000 period are given
in Table 3. Across the nearly 1,000 firms in the survey, cash
flow from operations, defined as cash flow from operations
divided by sales and referred to as cash conversion
efficiency (CCE), averages 9.0 percent. Incorporating a 95
percent confidence interval, CCE ranges from 5.6 percent to
12.4 percent. The days working capital (DWC), defined as
the sum of receivables and inventories less payables divided
by daily sales, averages 51.8 days and is very similar to the
days that sales are outstanding (50.6), because the inventory

H 1: Differences exist among industries with respect


to the measures of working capital efficiency
identified by CFO magazine.

Our second hypothesis is that working capital measures


for firms within an industry change across time. Since
the complete data set includes only four years (19961999), there is the potential for degrees of freedom issues
when using sophisticated models. Assessment of WCM
performance across years is conducted using the Kendalls
Coefficient of Concordance. Thus,

H 2: Working capital measures for firms within an


industry change across time.

Table 3
Average Working Capital Scoreboard Variables
Available Data Over Five Years
CFO Working
Capital Measures

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

Cash Conversion
Efficiency

10%

9%

10%

10%

6%

Days Working
Capital

59 days

46 days

52 days

52 days

50 days

Days sales
outstanding

49 days

50 days

52 days

52 days

50 days

Days payables
outstanding

27 days

34 days

33 days

33 days

33 days

Inventory turns/year 10 times 12 times 11 times 11 times 11 times


(days)
(37 days) (30 days) (33 days) (33 days) (33 days)
SOURCE: Annual Working Capital Surveys, CFO

Mid-American Journal of Business, Vol. 20, No. 2

13

Filbeck and Krueger

turnover rate (once every


Table 4
32.0 days) is similar to
Overall Working Capital Performance
the number of days that
By Industry with at Least an Average of Eight Companies Per Year
payables are outstanding
1996 1999
(32.4 days). In all
instances, the standard
Industry
Mean Overall CFO
Standard Deviation of
Range of Rankings
deviation is relatively
Ranking of Working
Working Capital
across All Firms and
small, suggesting that
Capital Performance
Performance
Years
these working capital
Petroleum
6
6
26
management variables
Electric & Gas Utility
24
8
35
are consistent across
Food Service
103
40
338
CFO reports.
Telecommunications
122
240
882
The low standard
Publishing
166
48
195
deviations reported in
Pharmaceuticals
183
48
401
Table 2 are accentuated
by the individual year
Forest Products
186
66
273
values presented in Table
Chemicals
193
75
309
3. As one might expect,
Food
245
87
338
given a gross domestic
Computers
247
97
367
product growth rate
Beverage
255
238
857
range of only 5.6 percent
Motor Vehicles
283
106
454
to 6.5 percent, there is
Food
&
Drug
Stores
287
61
243
relatively little difference
Building Materials
296
121
502
in the CCE and DWC
values. In 1996, CCE
Electronics
306
141
499
was at a low of 6.0
Specialty Retailers
313
115
458
percent. Otherwise, the
Health Care
365
144
623
CCE ratio was between
Metal Products
399
147
564
9 and 10 percent. DWC
Metals
448
117
413
reached a high of fiftyWholesale
519
193
687
nine days in 2000,
Furniture
531
234
904
mostly due to the slower
General Merchandise Stores
554
154
577
inventory turnover in
2000. Otherwise, DWC
Aerospace
624
220
720
values ranged from forty- Scientific Equipment
625
212
791
six to fifty-two days. The
Textiles
711
173
619
best year for working
Apparel
720
177
728
capital management, as
measured by a low days
This table represents the average overall rank of a company within the stated industry (e.g., the average rank of the eight
working capital figure
companies included from the Petroleum industry during the sample period was 6).
was 1999, when days
payables outstanding
reached a high of thirty Industry-based differences in overall working capital
four days and inventory turnover reached a high of twelve
management are presented in Table 4 for the twenty-six
times per year (otherwise days payable outstanding ranged
industries that had at least eight companies included in the
between twenty-seven and thirty-three days, with inventory
rankings each year. In the typical year, CFO magazine ranks
turns between ten and eleven times per year).
970 companies during this period. Industries are listed in
order of the mean overall CFO ranking of working capital
Industry Rankings on Overall Working Capital
performance. Since the best average ranking possible
Management Performance
for an eight-company industry is 4.5 (this assumes that
CFO magazine provides an overall working capital
the eight companies are ranked one through eight for the
ranking for firms in its survey, using the following equation:
entire survey), it is quite
obvious that all firms in the
Overall Ranking1 = (Highest overall CCE Company CCE) / (Highest overall CCE Lowest overall CCE) x
petroleum industry must have

(Lowest overall DWC Company DWC) / Lowest overall DWC Highest overall DWC)
been receiving very high

14

Mid-American Journal of Business, Vol. 20, No. 2

Filbeck and Krueger

overall working capital management rankings. In fact, the


petroleum industry is ranked first in CCE and third in DWC
(as illustrated in Table 5 and discussed later in this paper).
Furthermore, the petroleum industry had the lowest standard
deviation of working capital rankings and range of working
capital rankings. The only other industry with a mean
overall ranking less than 100 was the Electric & Gas Utility
industry, which ranked second in CCE and fourth in DWC.
The two industries with the worst working capital rankings
were Textiles and Apparel. Textiles rank twenty-second in
CCE and twenty-sixth in DWC. The apparel industry ranks
twenty-third and twenty-fourth in the two working capital
measures, respectively (also in Table 5).
The second column of Table 4 exhibits the standard
deviation in overall working capital performance rankings.

The industries with the greatest variation on the overall


working capital performance measure, as measured by
standard deviation, are the telecommunications industry and
the beverage industry. If one only examines the extremes,
the furniture industry is the industry with the greatest
extremes in rank as it has at least one company whose rank
varied from another firm in the same industry by 904 places.
Variations in profit margins and turnover rates are worthy
explanations for the wide disparity of rankings within the
furniture industry. In general, the stability of firm rankings
on WCM measures suggests that although a given level
of current asset or current liability management impacts
share price, one does not have to be overly concerned with
changes in working capital management style.

Table 5
Average Industry Ranks of Working Capital Management Measures
Across Components and Overall Ratings
1996 1999
Firm

Cash Conversion
Efficiency

Days of Working
Capital

Days Sales
Outstanding

Inventory
Turnover

Days Payables
Outstanding

Aerospace

20

23

19

19

19

Apparel

23

24

11

25

21

Beverage

12

10

Building Materials

14

12

10

Chemicals

14

20

13

Computer

13

16

13

Electric/Gas Utilities

22

10

Electronics

21

22

15

Food

11

10

20

16

Food Services

10

26

Food Stores

26

25

Forest Products

11

11

12

Furniture

18

22

17

16

20

General Merchandise

24

16

24

14

Health Care

17

17

23

23

Metals

19

18

14

Metal Products

15

19

15

17

Motor Vehicles

16

13

Petroleum

25

Pharmaceuticals

20

21

26

11

Publishing

14

24

Scientific Equipment

13

25

26

23

18

Specialty Retailers

21

18

17

Telecommunications

24

Textiles

22

26

28

21

22

Wholesale Trade

25

15

12

12

15

Mid-American Journal of Business, Vol. 20, No. 2

15

Filbeck and Krueger

Industry Rankings Across Individual Working Capital


Management Characteristics
Table 5 breaks the overall working capital management
rank in Table 4 into rankings of particular working capital
measures (including the two components, CCE and
DWC, which make up the overall rank). For instance, the
petroleum industry, ranked first for overall performance,
only ranks first in one of the five specific working capital
measures, CCE measure. In fact, as shown in the center
column of Table 5, petroleums DSO performance is
second worst among all industries. However, DSO is not
included in the compilation of the overall rank. While Table
5 provides the relative rankings of industries across the
five working capital management measures, one may still
wonder about the variation of these rankings over time.
All of the instances wherein the standard deviation
of firm rankings exceeded 5.0 are exhibited in Table 6.
There were only eleven instances wherein the standard
deviation exceeded 5.0. Both inventory turnover and days
payables outstanding had a higher standard deviation in four
instances. Only one industryTelecommunicationshad
over two instances where the standard deviation of the
industry ranking on a given working capital measure
exceeded 5.0. One reason for this variation is the lack of
stability in industry members, with over 60 percent of
the firms in 1996 no longer in the study in 2000. Some
of the other significant changes include a dramatic drop
in inventory turnover within the Petroleum industry and
slower payment of accounts payable in the wholesale
trade industry. In the other 93 instances (26 x 4 11),
the variation in industry rankings for a working capital
management variable is relatively stable.
The number of days of working capital is relatively low
in both the food services and food stores industries. Food
stores, which are primarily cash-and-carry businesses,
exhibit the shortest days sales outstanding ranking (with
food services coming in second). However, food services
have quicker inventory turnover, with the publishing

industry squeezing in between it and food stores. As one


might imagine, food services, which like food stores tend
to get payment upon purchase for merchandise, also need
to make payments rapidly. In fact, these industries have
the shortest days payables outstanding ranking, resulting
in being at the bottom of the DPO column. Another factor
hurting the performance of the food stores industry is its
poor cash flow from operations per dollar of sales, resulting
in it being ranked twenty-sixth in the Cash Conversion
Efficiency, the first column of Table 5. Most industries were
slower in collecting on sales than paying bills. In fact, only
the food services, food stores, and specialty retailers had
an average days payables outstanding value that exceeded
their average days receivables outstanding. In addition,
the beverage industry had a higher DPO than DSO value
in three years, while the same relationship was true of the
Apparel industry in only one instance. In all other eightyeight (26 x 4 16) instances, the industrys average DSO
value was higher that year.
Since CFO magazine only provides annual information,
we are unable to assess the seasonal variation in WCM. All
of the standard deviation data supplied illustrates the lack
of much variation in WCM. Looking at the data, the most
significant trends existed in the Inventory Turnover measure,
with the Beverage industry rising from eighteenth to eighth
place, and the Telecommunications industry dropping from
the second to twenty-first position. Telecommunications also
has a slower average collection period and quicker payment
to suppliers, resulting in their DWC ranking dropping from
first to twenty-fifth place. The only other trend in the data
was the improvement (slowing) of payments to suppliers in
the wholesale trade industry.
Six industriesfood service, food and drug stores,
forest products, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, and publishing
rank in both the highest three and lowest three levels
for at least one of their working capital performance
rank measures. Table 5 illustrates that three industries
(aerospace, building materials, and furniture) show the
five individual working
capital performance
Table 6
rankings are within six
Instances Where the Standard Deviation of Rankings Exceed 5.0
places of each other.
Of course, not having
extremely different levels
Cash
Days of
Days
of performance across
Days Sales
Inventory
Conversion
Working
Payables
Outstanding
Turnover
individual working
Efficiency
Capital
Outstanding
capital measures is not
necessarily good. The
Beverage
5.1
aerospace industry has
Electric/Gas Utilities
6.1
the worst performance in
Furniture
5.3
Days of Working Capital
Health Care
6.6
(ranked twenty-third),
Petroleum
7.2
but is only worthy of the
Telecommunications
9.9
10.3
9.0
6.2
nineteenth ranking for
Wholesale Trade
6.3
5.7
days sales outstanding, its
best performance.
16

Mid-American Journal of Business, Vol. 20, No. 2

Filbeck and Krueger

Table 7
Analysis of Working Capital Management Overall and Across Components
Working Capital Management Aspects Identified by CFO magazine
1996-1999
Industry Significance Measure using ANOVA F-value

Industry
Significance

Cash
Conversion
Consistency

Days of Working
Capital

Days Sales
Outstanding

Inventory
Turnover

Days Payables
Outstanding

CFOs Overall
Ranking

20.60**

21.54**

35.47**

22.12**

13.62**

14.72**

Inter-Year Period Consistency Measured using Kendalls Coefficient of Concordancea


Period Consistency

86.85**

87.35**

91.91**

87.64**

85.15**

83.24**

The significance of Kendalls coefficient of concordance statistic (W) is measured using chi-square values, calculated as follows:
x2 = Number of years (Number of industries - 1) W
The critical value using Kendalls Coefficient of Concordance (alpha = 0.01) is 44.31.
Significance: * = 0.05; ** = 0.01
a

Statistical Significance of Raw Numbers


Table 4 and Table 5 report ordinal rankings of industries
across working capital management variables. The ordinal
rankings might be creating differences across industries
that are, in reality, quite minute. Given the wide range of
industry performance rankings, one might wonder whether
there is a significant difference in industry performance
within individual aspects of working capital management.
Table 7 shows the tests related to our two hypotheses.
In the first row (industry significance), we find support
for our first hypothesis that significant differences exist
between industries across time with respect to measures of
working capital measures. The greatest differences occur in
the days sales outstanding ranking, which has a statistically
significant ANOVA F-value of 35.47. Table 7 shows
persistent statistical significance, which suggests that there
are significant differences in the industry working capital
management rankings.
The second row in Table 7 (period consistency) shows
the results related to our second hypothesis regarding the
consistency of working capital measures within industries
through time. This answers the question, are the firms cash
conversion values consistent from period to period? Table
3 shows that despite the consistency in average values
presented, there are significant changes in individual firm
values from year to year, based on the significance of each
of the values in the second row of Table 7. In other words,
working capital measures for a given firm are not static, and
significant differences in these measures exist across time.
With only four years of observations, the critical Kendalls
Coefficient of Concordance value is 44.31. Yet, each of the
Kendall Coefficient of Concordance values tends to be about
twice this level. These results indicate that working capital
measures vary across time. Taken together, our results in

Table 7 indicate that while working capital management


ratios are changing over time for the firms sampled, these
changes are consistent enough across industries to preserve
the industry ordering across time.

Conclusions

The research presented here is based on the annual


ratings of working capital management published in
CFO magazine. Our findings indicate a consistency in
how industries stack up against each other over time
with respect to the working capital measures. However,
the working capital measures themselves are not static
(i.e., averages of working capital measures across all
firms change annually); our results indicate significant
movements across our entire sample over time. Our findings
are important because they provide insight to working
capital performance across time, and on working capital
management across industries. These changes may be in
explained in part by macroeconomic factors. Changes in
interest rates, rate of innovation, and competition are likely
to impact working capital management. As interest rates
rise, there would be less desire to make payments early,
which would stretch accounts payable, accounts receivable,
and cash accounts.
The ramifications of this study include the finding of
distinct levels of WCM measures for different industries,
which tend to be stable over time. Many factors help to
explain this discovery. The improving economy during the
period of the study may have resulted in improved turnover
in some industries, while slowing turnover may have been
a signal of troubles ahead. Our results should be interpreted
cautiously. Our study takes places over a short time frame
during a generally improving market. In addition, the survey
suffers from survivorship bias only the top firms within

Mid-American Journal of Business, Vol. 20, No. 2

17

Filbeck and Krueger

each industry are ranked each year and the composition of


those firms within the industry can change annually.
Further research may take one of two lines. First, there
could be a study of whether stock prices respond to CFO
magazines publication of working capital management
ratings. Second, there could be a study of which, if any,
of the working capital management components relate to
share price performance. Given our results, these studies
need to take industry membership into consideration
when estimating stock price reaction to working capital
management performance.

Note
1. This ranking was not published in CFO magazine in 2002
or available at its Web site.

References
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CFO 14 (7):30-48.
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investment practices. Engineering Economist 44 (2): 137-150.
Fink, R. 2001. The 2001 working capital survey: Forget the float?
CFO 17 (9):54-64.
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management among large United States corporations.
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Management. Australia: Southwestern Press.
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details. CFO 15 (7):55-68.
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Inside the corporate cash machine. CFO 13 (6):54-68.
Myers, R. 2000. The 2000 working capital survey: Cash crop. CFO
16 (7):59-82.
Scherr, F. 1996. Optimal trade credit limits. Financial Management
25 (1):71-85.
Schwartz, R. 1974. An economic model of trade credit. Journal of
Financial and Quantitative Analysis 9:643-657.
Towne, J. 2002. Black inkSix Sigma archives, case study #5
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18

Mid-American Journal of Business, Vol. 20, No. 2

About the Authors

Dr. Greg Filbeck serves as Senior Vice President of Schweser


Study Program and Adjunct Professor of Research at the
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He earned his doctorate
in finance from the University of Kentucky. Prior to joining
Schweser Study Program in 1999, he enjoyed ten years of fulltime university teaching experience from Miami University and
the University of Toledo and has published over forty academic
articles. greg.filbeck@schweser.com
Dr. Thomas M. Krueger is a Professor of Finance at the
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He earned his doctorate
from the University of Kentucky. His teaching repertoire includes
investments, corporate finance, and decision making. He is the
past president of the Academy of Finance and is also the ECESP
Internship Coordinator. His research includes fifty journal articles,
including the Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor and equity
anomalies. Krueger.thom@uwlax.edu

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