This article summarized the responses of 235 manufacturing firms to a mail questionnaire survey sent to the chief financial officers of 1,013 firms located in the southern region of the US. Using employee size, the respondents represented a good cross section of firms from 100 employees to over 1,000. The findings were analyzed under topics typically found in financial management textbooks.
A major thrust of this paper was to provide insight into the extent to which manufacturers utilize various financial concepts. The study suggests that respondents were heavy users of such concepts as financial analysis and planning, working capital management, and fixed asset management. Finance topics such as cost of capital and optimal financial structure were not as widely utilized by respondents.
The findings from this study indicate widespread use of the less complex financial concepts, but a large gap exists between what is taught in the finance courses and what is practiced by business firms. Therefore, the transfer of knowledge from the finance classroom to practitioners has not been extremely effective. An observation from the study would be that academicians need to communicate more effectively to practitioners of the potential benefits of applying the more complex financial management concepts. Additionally, academicians should continue research in these more complex areas to possibly develop modifications of these concepts so they would be more useful to practitioners.