Analysis of the role of managers' characteristics in the relationship between Classes of cash flow statement and capital structure adjustment speed

The purpose of this research is to investigate the role of managers' characteristics in the relationship between the Classes of the cash flow statement and the speed of capital structure adjustment. To achieve this purpose, the information of 106 companies from the member companies of Tehran Stock Exchange in the period of 1385 to 1398 was selected as a screening sample.First, the effect of each cash flow statement class on adjustment speed in high and low leverage companies was tested through rolling regression. Then, in order to test the moderating role of managers' characteristics on the relationship between each of the classes of the cash flow statement and the speed of capital structure adjustment in companies with high and low optimal leverage, the sample was first divided into two groups of high and low characteristics based on the characteristics of managers. Then, the models were tested for each group separately. To examine the moderating role of managers' characteristics, Paternoster et al.'s (1998) approach has been used. The results show that firstly, the speed of reaching the optimal leverage is higher in companies with low optimal leverage than in companies with high optimal leverage. Secondly, the cash flow from operations is a moderating factor in the adjustment speed of optimal leverage for companies with high optimal leverage. In addition, the results showed that the characteristics of CEOs are only moderators on the relationship between operational activities and the speed of capital structure adjustment in highly leveraged companies.