The relevance of net working capital for value based management and its consideration within an Economic Value Added (EVA) framework

The EVA framework1 tries to embrace the traditional liquidity oriented working capital discussion and the more recent profit oriented access to the topic and positions working capital management within a shareholder value strategy. Our theoretical paper challenges the predictability of the impact working capital management has on EVA and thus challenges the need for working capital management being included in EVA based incentive systems. Our findings underline the complexity and limited predictability of measures addressing working capital in an EVA context and thus demonstrate the limitations of management influence on EVA.