Earnings Management Activities Research Articles

The Impact of CEO Narcissism Behavior on Firm Performance through Earnings Management

The purpose of this study is to see if Narcissistic CEO behavior patterns lead to earnings management. This study looks at the signs of Narcissistic CEO management practices and how they relate to company performance in 19 Manufacturing Companies listed on the IDX from 2017 to 2019. There are 57 people in the sample. The method of research used in this study was quantitative research with a causal approach. The SPSS test tool for Windows 24.0 is used to test hypotheses by using Path analysis. The findings, CEO narcissism, impact earnings management behavior, but it also impacts company performance through earnings management practices or actions. The CEO is the custodian of data and has the power to make decisions, including policies. The accounting will make every effort to portray good performance through a positive image and profit achievement as expected by investors as an indicator of performance measurement; as a result, CEOs with high self-confidence will use accounting policies to practice earnings management by adding profit figures as needed and the investors' wishes or lowering the profit rate as necessary to achieve the desired results

Sustainability measures and earnings management: evidence from Greek municipalities

PurposeThis study analyses the engagement of Greek municipalities in earnings management activities through the manipulation of their accrual accounts. It aims at identifying whether discretionary accruals are associated with certain financial sustainability measures calculated through financial statement numbers.Design/methodology/approachTo test the hypotheses, the annual financial data of Greek municipalities for the period 2011–2018 are used. The final sample corresponds to an unbalanced panel data sample that includes 1,565 yearly observations. Total accruals and discretionary accruals modelling are based both on the aggregate Jones model and the modified Jones model.FindingsThe findings provide evidence that Greek municipalities engage in earnings management practices through the manipulation of accruals. Moreover, there is corroborative evidence that financial sustainability indicators, such as indebtedness, liquidity and efficiency ratios, are related to the magnitude of earnings management, while earnings management behaviour during the year preceding the municipal elections is more intense.Originality/valueThe paper expands the literature in earnings management in local governments by analysing the relation of financial sustainability indicators to this behaviour.

The Influences Of Status Quo And Endowment Biases On Earnings Management

This study investigates the effects of status quo and endowment biases on earnings management behaviors. This research conducts a survey method in 2018. The sample comprises of 74 accounting students at a business school in Indonesia. The main variables are measured by questionnaires with 1 to 7 scale. The hypotheses are examined by multiple regression technique. The findings reveal that status quo and endowment biases positively influence earnings management actions. This research provides two contributions. This study attempts to link status quo and endowment biases to earnings management behaviors. This contributes additional theoretical explanations of earnings management behaviors among accountants. Research conclusions can be utilized to determine the suitable psychological aspects of accountants for earnings management decisions.

Corporate Governance, Audit Quality, Family Ownership and Earnings Management

This study aimed to obtain empirical evidence regarding the influence of corporate governance and audit quality on earnings management measures, as well as their relationship with the effect of family ownership. Research on earnings management has been widely conducted, but research in family firms is still limited, while based on previous observational data, 95% of companies in Indonesia are family firms. In addition, the difference in the concept of corporate governance in developing countries compared to developed countries is crucial in relation to company supervision patterns. Earnings management practices carried out by company management can be caused by the occurrence of information asymmetry in which management as an agent has more information related to the company than the company owner. This information asymmetry is used by managers to mislead other parties with the aim of increasing their managerial career or compensation. Implementing the corporate governance mechanism is a way to reduce earnings management. Another factor affecting earnings quality is audit quality. This study took a sample of manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange during the 2017- 2018 period. 152 sample data were tested. This study used secondary data obtained from annual reports of companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange. Moderated regression analysis (MRA) was used. Corporate governance had no effect on earnings management and audit quality had a significant effect on earnings management behavior. Family ownership was able to strengthen the effect of audit quality in determining earnings management actions.
 Keywords: corporate governance, audit quality, earnings management, family ownership

The impact of audit quality on real earnings management in the UK context

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether audit quality influence real earnings management activities using a sample of UK listed firms that have strong incentives to manage earnings upward through meeting past year’s earnings as a benchmark in the post-adoption period of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Design/methodology/approach The authors use a sample of 4,774 firm-year observations of UK listed firms during the period 2005–2018. Univariate and multivariate analyses have been conducted to test the association after controlling for firm characteristics and institutional variables. Findings The study reports that the presence of Big 4 auditors is significantly and positively related with greater levels of sales and discretionary expenses manipulation. Though the authors do not find any conclusive evidence on production costs manipulation, the aggregated measure of real earnings management shows a significant positive association with the presence of Big 4 auditors. Practical implications The study implies that managers who have incentives to manage earnings upward around the UK firms take advantage of the accounting flexibility in defining policies while reducing information asymmetry among the investors to signal better future performance. The approach to detect earnings manipulation as described in the auditing standards fails to limit the managerial use of real activities due to limited scope and unclear guidance. Thus, due to the significant impact on public policies, the results should, therefore, be of interest to the regulators and standard setters. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines the association between audit quality and real earnings management for the UK all-purpose operational firms in sampled data that just meet past year’s earnings as a benchmark in the post-IFRS period.

Predicting Earnings Management from Qualitative Disclosures

While analysts, customers, and lenders rely on financial disclosures to make decisions regarding a company, executives often manage the disclosed earnings. Detecting such practices is thus a concern for company stakeholders and regulators. Qualitative disclosures are an additional source of information about a company's financial situation, but executives likely attempt to hide their earnings management activity in these disclosures, as well. We use supervised machine learning models to predict earnings management by property and casualty insurers from the Management’s Discussion and Analysis filings. For this, we utilize a new algorithm that interprets textual data conditional on the reported financial situation of the company. We show that the qualitative disclosures can predict earnings management, revealing that executives are unable to remove all subliminal messages from them. The results demonstrate that qualitative disclosures can be useful for learning about the accounting choices of companies.

Earnings management and firms' investment behavior: The threshold effect of ROE

This paper, on the basis of a sample of Chinese listed firms, investigates the relationship between both real and accrual-based earnings management activities and firms' capital investment behavior. We apply the threshold model proposed by Hansen (1999) and find firms managing earnings can either over or underinvest, depending upon firms' return on equity (ROE) level. The study results show an inverted relationship between earnings management and firms' investment, which changes from negative to positive with ROE rising beyond certain threshold levels. We also find that the level of ROE affects whether managers use real and accrual manipulations jointly or as substitutes in affecting firms' investment. Our evidence is important because it sheds new light on the relationship between earnings management activities and firms' investment behavior by showing that ROE may act as an important determinant in this relationship. This finding has important implications for policymakers such as the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) as it shows that the regulatory benchmarks they set may have a significant impact on firms' investment behavior.

The role of intellectual capital as a mediation of relationship between audit committee and real earnings management

This study aims to examine the role of human capital, which is part of intellectual capital, as a mediator in the relationship between audit committee expertise and the number of audit committee meetings with real earnings management. This research is a quantitative study. The data source used is data from manufacturing companies in Indonesia. The sample selection technique used purposive sampling. The analysis technique uses path analysis. The results showed that the expertise of the audit committee had a significant effect on human capital, while the number of audit meetings had no effect on human capital. The results of this study also state that audit committee expertise, number of audit committee meetings and human capital performance have no effect on real earnings management actions. Furthermore, there is empirical evidence that shows that human capital has a mediating effect on the relationship between audit committee expertise and the number of audit committee meetings with real earnings management. The role of human capital in the relationship between the expertise of the audit committee and the number of audit committee meetings becomes originality, so it is the main contribution of research. The limitation of this research is that it only uses human capital as a mediating variable.

Political connections, government ownership, and earnings management: evidence from Jordan

This study examines the impact of political connections and government ownership on accrual and real earnings management. Based on a Jordanian sample of 310 firm-year observations, the study finds evidence that politically-connected firms exhibit a higher level of real earnings management, compared to non-politically-connected firms. This evidence suggests that politically-connected firms in Jordan opportunistically manipulate reported income to obtain a private gain through the use of real activities-based manipulation, at the expense of other minority shareholders. This may be caused by real earnings management activities being less subject to the risk of detection and monitoring. Further, the study finds evidence that government-connected firms engage in a lower level of accrual and real earnings management compared to non-government-connected firms, suggesting a positive effect for government ownership on the quality of financial reporting.

Having the government as a client: Does this reduce earnings management of the firm?

Does government contracting translate to better earnings quality and less earnings management? In this study, we seek to answer this question. We find strong evidence that government suppliers strategically substitute accrual-based earnings management with real earnings management. Firms with government customers distinctively employ greater real activities manipulation than their industry peers, as proxied by abnormal discretionary expenditures, abnormal production costs, and total real activities manipulation while avoiding accrual manipulation. These findings are robust to a host of robustness checks including measurement errors, selection bias and endogeneity. Hence, our findings have implications for procurement policy as policymakers may underestimate the total earnings management activities of government suppliers.

The influence of family board involvement on earnings management

This study explores the influence of family ownership and family board involvement on earnings management in German-listed firms. We extend existing research by applying a more precise measurement of family involvement that offers new insights into a family’s effect on earnings management behaviour. Our models suggest that the degree of management involvement of families is a significant driver of earnings management, a factor disregarded so far in the literature. Furthermore, the distinction between founding family and family ownership should be carefully considered. Employing a sample of 278 firms from 2000-2013, we find that greater family management presence on the executive board is associated with more earnings-decreasing accrual-based earnings management practices and more real earnings management activities via discretionary expenses. This is viewed as less value-destroying REM activity to meet earning targets. Overall, German family firms seem to use their powerful positions as shareholders and executive board members to expropriate shareholders and manage earnings to meet targets while maintaining family wealth

English

This study investigates the impact of the degree of financial distress on the earnings management activities of Italian non-listed firms using a linear regression model proxied by the Altman Z-Score which controls the heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation using the Petersen method. The extant literature provides mixed evidence on this relationship for listed firms. In this study we find a positive (negative) relationship between financial distress risk and income-decreasing (income-increasing) earnings management, suggesting that firms tend to manage earnings downward as financial distress risk increases. In two robustness tests, we test the power of the Kothari model and we also analyse a reduced firm sample representing over 80% of the population, though the results are qualitatively the same. Our research has several implications for academics, practitioners, lenders, and national standard setters, showing that, in contrast to the extant literature, non-listed firms are more likely to manage earnings downward as their financial situation deteriorates. Furthermore, our findings are of interest to national standard setters and professional accountants who are concerned with advanced warning indicators of firm financial problems such as Altman’s Z-score, especially in recent years in which countries are focused on developing robust empirical models to detect firm financial difficulties.   Key words: Financial distress, Altman’s Z-score, accrual-based earnings management, non-listed firms, Italian context.

Is There a Trade-Off Between Accrual-Based and Real Earnings Management Activities in the Presence of (fe) Male Auditors?

Prior research suggests that the presence of high-quality auditors (i.e. proxied by audit firm characteristics) constrains accrual-based earnings management, but it inadvertently leads to higher real activities manipulation. We investigate whether such trade-off exists between accrual-based and real earnings management activities in the presence of female or male auditors. We use a sample of UK firms for the period 2009 to 2016 and find that firms audited by female auditors do not resort to a higher-level real activities manipulation when their ability to engage in accruals management is constrained. Overall, our results suggest that the benefits of hiring female auditors (i.e. less accrual-based earnings management) are overwhelmingly higher than the costs they might bring to the client firms (i.e. higher real activities manipulation).

Effect of Firm Characteristics and Corporate Governance Practices on Earnings Management: Evidence from Publicly Listed Property Sector Firms in the Philippines

Two types of earnings management (EM), opportunistic and efficient motive, were presented in the literature. This article aimed to investigate the type of EM employed by publicly listed property sector firms in the Philippines. Furthermore, the study also examined the effect of firm characteristics and corporate governance practices on firm’s level of EM using discretionary accruals. In conducting this study, panel data econometric technique, particularly the ordinary least squares was used to determine which among the firm-specific characteristics (profitability, leverage, cash flows from operations and firm size) or corporate governance mechanisms (CEO duality, board size, board independence and audit quality) significantly influence publicly listed property sector firms’ EM activities using discretionary accruals. Results show that these firms employ efficient type of EM. Also, cash flows from operations, firm size and CEO duality are statistically significant predictors of EM for property firms. Except for cash flows from operations, these results contradict with prior studies when the same model was subjected for industrial firms. Such similarities and differences from previous studies warrant for further analysis on the peculiarities and intrinsic characteristics of the industrial and property sector in the Philippines. Such will point to certain policy frameworks in enabling EM to be harnessed in satisfying the firms’ bottom lines.

The role of directors with multiple board seats and earnings quality: A Singapore context

AbstractThis article explores whether multiple directorships has an influence on earnings management for Singaporean publicly listed firms. This article attempts to determine whether boards with multiple directorships are effective monitors and able deterrents of earnings management activities. Drawing on resource dependence theory, the results suggest that directors with multiple board seats will be able to tap on external resources for information, skills, and financial resources using their board connectedness. Data analysis is based on publicly listed firms on Singapore Stock Exchange (SSE) with a final pooled sample of 1,404 firm‐year observations from 2015 to 2018. Findings of this study show that with a higher level of multiple directorships, there is a significant negative relationship with the level of earnings management, where earnings management is measured by Dechow et al. (The Accounting Review, 1995, 70, 193–225) Modified Jones model and the Kothari et al. (Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2005, 39, 163–197) performance‐adjusted model. We also find that firms in Singapore that have a higher number of multiple directorships on its board, will have a lower level of tolerance on income‐increasing earnings manipulation. Notable secondary findings of this study include a significant negative relationship between the proportion of female directors on the board with the level of earnings management (income‐increasing manipulations). Additionally, it is found that the engagement of Big Four auditors has no significant relationship with the level of earnings management in the context of Singaporean firms. This study has significant implications and contributions to the theoretical applications and policy reforms, specifically pertaining to the Singapore Code of Corporate Governance on the issue of multiple directorships.

Pajak Kini, Pajak Tangguhan, Aset Pajak Tangguhan, Liabilitas Pajak Tangguhan Terhadap Manajemen Laba

The purpose of this study was to examine whether there is an effect of current tax expense, deferred tax, deferred tax assets, and deferred tax liability on earnings management actions in consumer goods companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). This study's sample consisted of 27 consumer goods industries listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2013-2017 using the purposive sampling method. Hypothesis testing in this study using the t-test. Earnings management is proxied by discretionary accruals using the Modified Jones Model. The type of data used is secondary data. Data analysis used OLS (regression equation analysis ordinary least square). The results show that the current tax has a significant effect on earnings management variables. The deferred tax affects earnings management, deferred tax assets affect earnings management, and deferred tax liabilities have no effect on earnings management. Research limitations The sample of companies used is considered less representative of the population because only manufacturing companies are used consumer goods. The research period in measuring earnings management variables is proxied by discretionary accruals for only five consecutive years, according to Jones (1991). profit can be seen if the research period is carried out for eight years. In this study, it is suggested that the research period used can be added, and the sample used can be extended to other company sectors and other measures of earnings management by using proxies.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, WHISTLE BLOWING POLICY DAN EARNINGS MANAGEMENT PADA PERUSAHAAN JASA DI INDONESIA

Corporate Governance mechanisms are not able to effectively mitigate Earnings Management. Whistleblowing Policy can play a role in carrying out effective functional governance so that it is expected to be able to reduce Earnings Management activities significantly. This study aims to examine whether the corporate governance mechanism in a company that implements Whistleblowing Policy is more effective in limiting Earnings Management than companies that do not implement Whistleblowing Policy. The study method used is descriptive-associative. The sample in this study was manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2016-2018. This research results in findings that the Corporate Governance mechanism is more effective in companies that have a Whistleblowing Policy than companies that do not have a Whistleblowing Policy. The flow of information before the Whistleblowing Policy occurs a significant effect. Likewise, company size and leverage also have a substantial impact on Earnings Management. Meanwhile, there is no effect on the number of independent commissioners on Earnings Management.

Hubungan Siklus Hidup Perusahaan dan Manajemen Laba: Good Corporate Governance sebagai Variabel Moderating

The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship of the corporate life cycles to earnings management and analyze Good Corporate Governance to moderate the relationship between the corporate life cycles with earnings management. This research use as quantitative approach using secondary data. The sampling technique uses purposive sampling method. The total sample used in this study were 75 company samples. The analysis technique used in this study is the Structural Equation Modeling-Partial Leasr Square (SEM-PLS) method using WarpPLS Version 5.0 Software. The results showed that the company’s life cycle variables influence earnings management and GCG can moderate the company’s life cycle relationship with earnings management so as to waked earnings management actions.

The Moderating Role of Earnings Management on the Relationship between Cash Flow Activities and Stock Returns in the Jordanian Manufacturing Firms

Purpose: This study examined the moderating role of earnings management on the relationship between cash flow activities and stock returns among the Jordanian manufacturing firms. Methodology: Data was collected from 44 companies listed in Amman Stock Exchange for the period 2013-2018. The obtained data was subsequently analyzed using descriptive and multiple linear regression analysis tools of SPSS, version 27. Findings: This study observed that earnings management, computed as per the modified Jones model of 1995, among the manufacturing firms in Jordan produce no significant influence on the relationship between stock returns and the cash flow activities. Moreover, there was no significant association between cash flow activities and the firms’ stock returns. Practical implications: The findings from this study give the management of manufacturing firms more freedom to independently list their stock. Originality: This paper highlights a pragmatic dissonance between earnings management and cash flow activities and stock returns as demonstrated by the data obtained from the manufacturing firms listed in Amman stock exchange for the period 2013-2018.

Incomplete Share Repurchase Programs in Vietnam: Completion Rates and Short-Term Returns

Stock repurchases have become a preferred method of distributing cash to stockholders. However, given the high level of information asymmetry and weak corporate governance as well as poor investor protection in Vietnam, many Vietnamese firms use stock repurchases as a tool to manipulate stock prices in the market. Using event study methodology and Tobit regression models, this study examines the stock price behaviors surrounding the event dates and the impact of earnings management activities prior to the stock repurchases on the completion of repurchase announcements in Vietnam. The results show that earnings management practices prior to stock repurchase programs, the percentage of intended buyback shares, and CEO characteristics have a significant impact on the completion of these repurchase programs. Moreover, most of the windows surrounding the event dates do not have any significant abnormal movement of the stock prices. A plausible explanation is that, due to weak corporate governance and poor investor protection, Vietnamese firms send lots of misleading signals through various corporate activities, especially stock repurchase programs. Thus, these signals have less meaning to investors.