Earnings Management, Corporate Governance, and True Financial Performance

Abstract

This paper addresses two questions. First, do corporate governance mechanisms that have been shown to affect firm behavior in other contexts also affect the degree to which firms advantageously manage their reported financial performance? Second, does past research investigating the impact of governance structure and option-based compensation on firm performance stand up when measured performance is adjusted for the impact of earnings management? We demonstrate that corporate governance mechanisms effectively constrain discretion in earnings management and that the estimated impact of governance variables on corporate performance is far stronger when discretionary accruals are removed from reported earnings. Institutional ownership of shares, institutional investor representation on the board of directors, and the presence of independent outside directors on the board all reduce the use of discretionary accruals in earnings management. These factors largely offset the impact of options compensation, which we find strongly encourages earnings management. Earnings management strongly affects patterns of reported corporate performance. While conventional profitability measures suggest a strong relationship between option compensation and firm performance, profitability measures that are adjusted for the impact of discretionary accruals show no relationship with option compensation. In contrast, the estimated impact of corporate governance variables on firm performance more than doubles when discretionary accruals are eliminated from measured profitability.