Aggressive Earnings Management And Stakeholders Protection In Profit Listed Organizations

Abstract

Investors want to know that their interests come first, thus they place a high value on the public perception of the companies in which they have invested. The problem of stock market and share price performance, which is a major concern for shareholders and investors in the Nigerian capital market and indeed any other stock markets, is unpredictable. This study investigated the relationship between aggressive earnings management and shareholders' interest in profitable publicly listed corporations. The study employed an ex-post facto research design. The population of the research consisted of 35 manufacturing companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group as of December 31, 2020. Purposive Sampling technique was adopted to select 10 companies from 2011- 2020. Data were obtained from publicly available yearly reports, and they were certified by the NSE and outside auditors. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized to analyze the data using regression analysis. According to the findings, aggressive profits management had no discernible effect on business protection (FStat (2,97)=11.994, p > 0.05, Adj R2=0.43), but it had a discernible effect on creditors' protection (F- Stat (2,97)=2.74, p <0.05, Adj R2=0.39). In contrast, based on the study's findings, it was advised that management of businesses develop measures to help increase their profitability, which would in turn have an effect on shareholders' return on equity and earnings per share. Significant relationships between discretionary accruals, unusual production costs, and irregular levels of operational cash flow and stakeholders' interest in profit-listed firms were discovered. Second, business owners should use profits measurement methods that have been validated via testing on a global scale, like the numerous indicators included in this study that were gleaned from accounting and finance literature