The Relationship Between Board Diversity and Earnings Management Practices: Literature Review

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zakeya Sanad ◽  
Dr. Gagan Kukreja ◽  
Radha Shiwakotir Shiwakotir
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hany Kamel ◽  
Emad Awadallah

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current level of voluntary corporate disclosure in the Egyptian Stock Exchange. In addition, it explores the factors influencing the extensiveness of voluntary disclosure and examines the potential consequences of such disclosure in regards to the phenomenon of earnings management. Design/methodology/approach A relevant disclosure index to the Egyptian context was adopted to assess the level of voluntary disclosure in the 2010 annual reports of the most actively traded companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange. The relationship between the extent of voluntary disclosure and each specific-related factor was examined using unranked and ranked OLS regression models. Meanwhile, a system of simultaneous equations was performed using a two-stage least squares regression model in order to investigate whether companies with higher levels of voluntary disclosure exhibit lower levels of earnings management practices. Findings The results indicate that the level of voluntary disclosure is positively responsive to specific corporate attributes, namely, the type of auditing firm and the two industries of Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, and Chemicals. However, no significant indications were found that firm size, leverage, profitability and liquidity are important determinants of corporate disclosure. Also, the results show no evidence to support the prior anticipation that a higher level of voluntary disclosure reduces the ability of managers to make use of earnings management. On the contrary, it was found that leverage and the tendency of firms to avoid reporting declines in earnings are the main drivers of the phenomenon of earnings management in Egypt. Practical implications This paper has important implications for both domestic and overseas investors in Egypt as well as the regulatory authorities in the developing economies. Originality/value The main contribution of this paper is its focus on the extent of voluntary disclosure in a developing country such as Egypt, which has a high potential for economic growth in the near future. Besides, this paper is the first to examine the relationship between the level of voluntary disclosure and the phenomenon of earnings management in the Egyptian context.


We examine whether wide-ranging board diversity reduce earnings management from the emerging market of Malaysia. We contribute to the prior literature in several ways. First, while previous literature are mainly focusing on the developing economy, our study is the first that examine the relationship between all-inclusive set of diverse board characteristics and earnings management from the emerging economy. Second, we concentrate to the post-GFC period, where we intentionally avoid the GFC, a situation where managerial opportunistic behaviour to engage in earnings management is more prevalent due to economic reason. Third, we cover the potential complementary or substitutive effects of board diversity characteristics on earnings management. Using 1400 listed firms in emerging market of Malaysia over the period of 2009-2015, in contrast to our prediction, our findings demonstrated that the relationship between board diversity characteristics and earnings management in the Malaysia is mixed. We therefore conclude that the diversity mechanism that work well in the developing countries might not necessarily compatible to the emerging economy such as Malaysia.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 1493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Lakhal

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate governance devices on earnings management for French-listed firms. Particularly, it examines the relationship between corporate disclosure practices, ownership structure features and earnings management by French managers. Results show that the relationship between earnings management measures and disclosure scores is negative suggesting that less transparent firms are likely to engage in earnings management practices. The findings also show that families, institutional investors and multiple large shareholders negatively influence earnings management, and hence, act as good corporate governance devices to limit managerial discretion. This paper shed light on the monitoring role of corporate disclosures and ownership structure in the French context where minority shareholders interests are less protected than in common law countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2, special issue) ◽  
pp. 165-166
Author(s):  
Engy ElHawary ◽  
Dina Hassouna

This research aims to look at how firm characteristics and audit quality can affect the earning management practices in the Egyptian context, within the period of 2011–2019. This period was after the Egyptian revolution and has not been well investigated in Egypt, especially after the new release of corporate governance rules for listing firms. A sample of 157 non-financial listed companies in the Egyptian stock exchange is selected for achieving the research objective through analysing their financial reports. The panel least squares, using the fixed-effect model, is used to test the hypotheses and investigate the relationship between discretional accruals and firm characteristics, where the dependent variable is the earnings management, measured by the discretionary accruals and the independent variables are the firm characteristics (size, financial leverage, age, survival and audit quality). The results illustrate that the relationship between a firm’s financial leverage and earnings management is positive. This study may help the firms to control their financial leverage for avoiding any earnings management practice. The stakeholders should notice such significant firm characteristics in making their own decisions, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, which may expectedly increase the firm financial leverage, and in turn, some earning management practices can be used intentionally to hide the bad firm performance


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dhouha Bouaziz ◽  
Bassem Salhi ◽  
Anis Jarboui

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics on the earnings management examined by the discretionary accruals. Design/methodology/approach The sample includes 151 French firms listed on the CAC ALL shares index from 2006 to 2015. The paper uses the feasible generalized least square regression technique to test the relationship between CEO characteristics and earnings management. Findings Using discretionary accruals as a proxy for earnings management, the results obtained from the three models (Jones modified 1995; Kothari et al., 2005; Raman and Shahrur, 2008) indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between CEO duality, CEO nationality and the quality of financial communication. However, no significant relationship was found between CEO board member, CEO turnover and earnings management. Originality/value A literature review finds that fewer studies have investigated the relationship between earnings management practices and personal CEO characteristics in the French context. Furthermore, no study yet has examined the influence of CEO nationality and CEO age on earnings management practices. This study provides empirical data about the impact of CEO’s characteristics on earnings management and how these different characteristics can facilitate the transition to manipulate and influence the quality of financial communication.


2021 ◽  
Vol 07 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Khosasi ◽  
◽  
Rizky Eriandani ◽  

Abstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan menguji pengaruh managerial entrenchment terhadap hubungan tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan (CSR) dengan praktik manajemen laba. Data yang digunakan adalah semua perusahaan sektor manufaktur yang terdaftar di BEI periode 2016-2018. Proksi yang digunakan untuk mengukur managerial entrenchment adalah kepemilikan saham CEO dan masa jabatan CEO. Pengolahan data menggunakan moderated regression analysis. Hasil penelitian yang diperoleh menyatakan bahwa tanggungjawab sosial perusahaan berpengaruh negatif terhadap manajemen laba, sedangkan masa jabatan CEO dan kepemilikan saham CEO tidak memberikan pengaruh terhadap hubungan tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan dengan manajemen laba. Selain itu, pada penelitian ini juga menemukan bahwa masa jabatan CEO memiliki pengaruh yang signifikan terhadap kesenjangan tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan. Penelitian ini memberikan implikasi bahwa walaupun managerial entrenchment tidak merusak hubungan CSR dan tindakan manajemen laba, namun managerial entrenchment menentukan jenis aktifitas CSR yang dilakukan perusahaan. Abstract: This study aims to examine the effect of managerial entrenchment on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and earnings management practices. The data used are all manufacturing sector companies listed on the IDX for the 2016-2018 period. The proxies used to measure managerial entrenchment are CEO's share ownership and CEO's tenure. Data processing using moderated regression analysis. The results obtained indicate that corporate social responsibility harms earnings management. At the same time, the tenure of the CEO and CEO's share ownership does not affect the relationship between corporate social responsibility and earnings management. In addition, this study also found that CEO tenure has a significant influence on the corporate social responsibility gap. This study implies that although managerial entrenchment does not damage the relationship between CSR and earnings management actions, managerial entrenchment determines the company's types of CSR activities.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai Mohammed Alm El-Din ◽  
Atef Mohammed El-Awam ◽  
Farid Moharram Ibrahim ◽  
Ahmed Hassanein

PurposeThe study explores the relationship between information overloading and the complexity of reporting. In particular, it investigates whether voluntary information in a firm annual report is associated with its readability. Likewise, it examines how a firm's profitability and earnings management practices impact the nexus of voluntary disclosure and readability.Design/methodology/approachIt uses the annual reports of the Egyptian nonfinancial firms listed in the EGX 100 index from 2010 to 2018. The readability of the annual report is measured automatically using the LIX index, and a predeveloped voluntary disclosure index is used to measure the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports.FindingsThe results reveal that the readability of annual reports is a negative function of voluntary disclosure, suggesting that Egyptian firms with more voluntary disclosure are likely to have more complex (i.e. less readable) annual reports. Likewise, less profitable firms and firms with earning management practices increase voluntary information in their annual reports, resulting in an adverse impact on their reporting readability.Research limitations/implicationsIt focuses only on the annual reports of Egyptian firms and considers a firm’s overall voluntary information rather than a particular area of voluntary disclosure. It introduces a code to measure the readability of Arabic-written texts, which can be applied to different areas of disclosure.Practical implicationsPolicymakers in Egypt are encouraged to develop enforceable regulations to control voluntary disclosure in annual reports. Egyptian investors should view the practice of higher voluntary disclosure skeptically as its aim may be to divert attention from a firm's poor performance and earnings management practice.Originality/valueThe study is the first evidence from Egypt on the effect of information overloading, proxied by voluntary disclosure, on the readability of reporting. Likewise, it contributes to methodological development in measuring the readability of Arabic-written annual reports.


2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 395-415
Author(s):  
Souha Siala Bouaziz ◽  
Ines Ben Amar Fakhfakh ◽  
Anis Jarboui

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the relationship between shareholder activism and earnings management on the market performance of French companies. Design/methodology/approach This study used 385 firm-year observations drawn from a sample of French companies belonging to the SBF 120 index from 2008 to 2012. Data was collected from annual reports of sample companies. To measure earnings management, this study used the model of Raman and Shahrur (2008). The relationship between shareholder activism, earnings management and market performance using the panel data regression model was empirically examined. Findings The results prove that shareholder activism, as indicated by shareholder proposals, has no impact on market performance. However, the existence of shareholder activism affects the market performance positively. In fact, a minimum of proposals proves that shareholder activism plays an appropriate and effective role in creating value. Thus, several activists would resort to “a private activism” which could be the best and the least expensive form. This form of activism is called “behind the scenes.” Findings also show that earnings management has a negative impact on market performance. As a matter of fact, these findings allow to conclude that the firm performance decreases whenever managers undertake to earnings management. Also, earnings management behavior is mainly opportunistic. Finally, the relationship between shareholder activism and earnings management has no impact on market performance. This result reveals that shareholder activism proves to be an ineffective mechanism that does not alter the accounting choices, particularly in relation to earnings management. This result shows the inability of active shareholders to define and implement strategies across their proposals, namely, “the lack of monitoring competence.” Research limitations/implications It is important in future research to evaluate the impact of behind the scenes interventions on corporate governance. Also, this paper gives a larger dimension to the effect of shareholder activism on the market performance in the specific context of earnings management, thus justifying the need to expand this study using other methodologies to deepen and better understand this relationship in this context. Practical implications The paper's evidence contributes to an understanding of corporate governance. The finding of this study will help in monitoring and controlling fraudulent earnings management practices that effect on market performance. Further, this study is important to investors, academics and policymakers, as it demonstrates that governance reforms that encourage firms to adopt better governance practices that reduce the likelihood of earnings management. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper pioneers in focusing on the impact of the shareholder activism and earnings management on the market performance because previous studies put more emphasis on pair-wise relations (Shareholder activism-earnings management, earnings management-market performance and shareholder activism-market performance). This study provides empirical evidence on the effectiveness of the relationship between shareholder activism and earnings management on market performance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 650-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilel Bzeouich ◽  
Faten Lakhal ◽  
Neila Dammak

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between earnings management and the efficiency of French firms’ investments. It also investigates the moderating effect of board of directors’ features on this relation.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on a sample of French listed companies from 2011 to 2015, i.e. 435 firm-year observations. The authors use the instrumental variable method based on 2SLS models.FindingsThe authors show that there is a negative relationship between earnings management and investment efficiency. This finding supports the theoretical perspective of the agency theory, as the propensity of firms to engage in earnings management practices is associated with high managerial opportunistic behavior and asymmetric information issues, leading to the problem of under and overinvestment. The findings also show that board size, independence and gender diversity are positively associated with investment efficiency. These board features moderate the relationship between earnings management and investment efficiency suggesting that earnings quality plays a more prominent role in guiding managers to choose the right investments when the corporate governance environment is strong.Research limitations/implicationsThe negative relationship between earnings management and investment efficiency suggests that firms with lower earnings quality are exposed to high information asymmetries. They are then more likely to deviate from their expected level of investments. In addition, the results highlight the importance of corporate financial transparency and board monitoring to reduce agency costs and ensure the efficiency of corporate investments, particularly in a setting where investors’ interests are poorly protected.Originality/valueThis paper is the first to the best of the authors’ knowledge to examine the effect of earnings management, a metric for earnings quality, on the corporate investment efficiency in France. Besides, they extend previous literature by investigating how board features are able to monitor managerial actions and decisions and therefore to moderate the effect of earnings management on investment efficiency.


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