Is there One Pattern of Earnings Management Motivations Fit all Contexts? An Empirical Study

Abstract

This paper aims at exploring the effect of the Egyptian context on shaping executives' motives to manage earnings; and identifying the most influential managerial motives: managerial self-interests and external environmental factors. The research adopts an interpretative methodology and interview methods. Interviewees were conducted with twenty managers representing five different companies within industrial and service sectors of the Egyptian economy. The findings of this research suggest that a firm’s context has an influence on shaping managers’ self-interests and that in Egypt the job market is a powerful motive for managing the financial reports, followed by cash bonuses; however, stock-based compensation lacks the power to motivate managers into making such financial improvements. In addition, this paper concludes that environmental motives are more important than motives related to managers’ self-interests, because managers cannot achieve their own interests without complying with the external pressures or motives to manage the financial reports. The principal contribution of this paper is to build on the previous earnings management literature to consider the firms' context while studying managers' motives. It pairs the economic factors with institutional factors to form the main reasons behind: 1) managers’ engagement in earnings management; and 2) the superiority of environmental factors over the managerial self-interests motives. It also sheds light on, there is no one pattern of earning management motivations fit all contexts. This paper also contributes to the new institutional sociology literature by bringing managers’ interests and power into the centre of the conceptual framework.