Earnings Management and Corporate Governance Evidence from Jordanian Banks

Abstract

The board of directors typically selects and removes officers, initiates fundamental changes, determines capital structure, adds, amends, or repeals bylaws (such as mergers and divestitures), declares dividends and sets the compensation for officers and management. The segregation of duties involves assigning different employees to perform functions so that an employee acting alone is prevented from committing an error or concealing a fraud in the normal course of their duties. Four types of functional responsibilities should be segregated: the authority to execute transactions, the recording of transactions, custody of the assets affected by the transactions and periodic reconciliation of existing assets to recorded amounts. There are several studies on the influence of corporate governance in developed markets relating to a variety of aspects. However, in the context of the Jordan market, such researches are rare. The paper analyses the governance practices of 13 Jordanian listed banks listed. The main findings of the study are that there is a positive relationship between board sizes and earnings management (EM) through discretionary accruals, that there is no relationship between independence and segregation of duties, and that EM through discretionary accruals and board size mediates the association between corporate governance structure and (EM) through discretionary accruals.