The Influence of Monitoring Mechanisms and Opportunistic Behaviors Toward Earnings Management

Abstract

Corporate collapse which resulted from financial scandals keeps increasing in numbers. This study examines the influence of monitoring mechanisms and opportunistic behaviors toward earnings management (EM). Discretionary accrual is a proxy of EM in this study. Monitoring behaviors are proxied by two variables named leverage and dividend. Opportunistic behaviors are proxied by free cash flow (FCF) and profitability (ROA). 481 companies listed in Bursa Malaysia were collected, while another 401 public companies were collected from the Australian Stock Exchange. Several statistical analyses were carried out to examine the influence of monitoring mechanisms (leverage and dividend) and opportunistic behaviors (free cash flow and profitability) toward EM. The findings of this study revealed that only opportunistic behaviors have significant influence on EM in Malaysia. However, for Australia, the result indicated that only one determinant of monitoring mechanisms (dividend) has significant relationship with EM. The same goes to opportunistic behaviors, which indicated that only FCF has significant relationship with EM. For pool data countries, the result revealed that the hypotheses were also partially supported by both monitoring mechanisms and opportunistic behaviors toward EM.