Restricted Stock Incentive Unlocking Conditions and Earnings Management—A Case Study of Haier Smart Home

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-642-5_5How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Restricted Stock Incentive; Earnings Management; Haier Smart Home

Abstract

Equity incentives are widely used in talent incentives of listed companies. Restricted stocks have become the choice of many enterprises due to the strong constraint of “performance-based unlocking standards”, but single financial unlocking conditions tend to induce the management’s earnings management behavior. Taking Haier Smart Home, a leading enterprise in the smart home industry, as the research object, this paper uses a case analysis method, combined with principal-agent theory and incentive contract design theory, to explore the relevance and economic consequences of unlocking conditions and earnings management behavior. The study found that: Haier Smart Home equity incentive plan takes financial indicators such as net profit growth rate and return on equity as the core unlocking conditions, plus classified and hierarchical management and high threshold performance requirements, to promote the steady growth of the company’s profitability, cash flow and sales revenue at the financial level, and significantly improve the retention rate of core employees, stimulate innovation vitality and promote department collaboration at the non-financial level; However, to meet the unlocking conditions, the company has earnings management behavior, the impact of industry competition and the expected stable demand of the capital market; Earnings management can optimize the financial image and market trust in the short term, and may weaken the quality of accounting information and core innovation ability in the long term. This study provides a reference for listed companies to optimize incentive contract design and balance short-term incentive effects with long-term development goals.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yike Xia
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/04/29
TI  - Restricted Stock Incentive Unlocking Conditions and Earnings Management—A Case Study of Haier Smart Home
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 11th International Conference on Financial Innovation and Economic Development (ICFIED 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 35
EP  - 44
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-642-5_5
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-642-5_5
ID  - Xia2026
ER  -