IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/bracre/v53y2021i6s0890838921000627.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Connecting earnings management to the real World:What happens in the black box of the boardroom?

Author

Listed:
  • Brennan, Niamh M.

Abstract

This British Accounting & Finance Association (BAFA) distinguished academic 2020 plenary address marries the researcher's two main research areas – financial reporting and corporate governance. Like Vivien Beattie (BAFA 2011 distinguished academic), the researcher commenced in the positivist tradition but was increasingly drawn to more qualitative, interdisciplinary perspectives, influencing the paper's positioning.

Suggested Citation

  • Brennan, Niamh M., 2021. "Connecting earnings management to the real World:What happens in the black box of the boardroom?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(6).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bracre:v:53:y:2021:i:6:s0890838921000627
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2021.101036
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890838921000627
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.bar.2021.101036?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Niamh M. Brennan & Collette E. Kirwan & John Redmond, 2016. "Accountability processes in boardrooms," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 29(1), pages 135-164, January.
    2. Vivien Beattie & Stella Fearnley & Tony Hines, 2014. "Boundary spanning and gatekeeping roles of UK audit committees," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(3), pages 315-343, June.
    3. Fama, Eugene F & Jensen, Michael C, 1983. "Agency Problems and Residual Claims," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 327-349, June.
    4. Adam Fforde, 2017. "Confirmation bias: methodological causes and a palliative response," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 51(5), pages 2319-2335, September.
    5. Caroline Lambert & Samuel Sponem, 2005. "Corporate governance and profit manipulation: a French field study," Post-Print halshs-00170340, HAL.
    6. Arun, Thankom Gopinath & Almahrog, Yousf Ebrahem & Ali Aribi, Zakaria, 2015. "Female directors and earnings management: Evidence from UK companies," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 137-146.
    7. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2005. "The economic implications of corporate financial reporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-3), pages 3-73, December.
    8. Fudenberg, Drew & Tirole, Jean, 1995. "A Theory of Income and Dividend Smoothing Based on Incumbency Rents," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(1), pages 75-93, February.
    9. K.V. Peasnell & P.F. Pope & S. Young, 2005. "Board Monitoring and Earnings Management: Do Outside Directors Influence Abnormal Accruals?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(7‐8), pages 1311-1346, September.
    10. Jerry Sun & Guoping Liu & George Lan, 2011. "Does Female Directorship on Independent Audit Committees Constrain Earnings Management?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 99(3), pages 369-382, March.
    11. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    12. Dichev, Ilia D. & Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2013. "Earnings quality: Evidence from the field," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 1-33.
    13. Sam Han & Tony Kang & Stephen Salter & Yong Keun Yoo, 2010. "A cross-country study on the effects of national culture on earnings management," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 41(1), pages 123-141, January.
    14. Badolato, Patrick G. & Donelson, Dain C. & Ege, Matthew, 2014. "Audit committee financial expertise and earnings management: The role of status," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 208-230.
    15. Demski, Js & Sappington, Dem, 1987. "Delegated Expertise," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 68-89.
    16. Michael J. Brennan, 1994. "Incentives, Rationality, And Society," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 7(2), pages 31-39, June.
    17. García Lara, Juan Manuel & García Osma, Beatriz & Mora, Araceli & Scapin, Mariano, 2017. "The monitoring role of female directors over accounting quality," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 651-668.
    18. McSWEENEY, BRENDAN, 1997. "The Unbearable Ambiguity Of Accounting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 22(7), pages 691-712, October.
    19. Fields, Thomas D. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Vincent, Linda, 2001. "Empirical research on accounting choice," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 255-307, September.
    20. Peter Heslin & Lex Donaldson, 1999. "An Organizational Portfolio Theory of Board Composition," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(1), pages 81-88, January.
    21. Shepardson, Marcy L., 2019. "Effects of individual task-specific experience in audit committee oversight of financial reporting outcomes," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 56-74.
    22. Niamh Brennan & Collette E. Kirwan & John Redmond, 2016. "Accountability Processes in Boardrooms: A Conceptual Model of Manager-Non-Executive Director Information Asymmetry," Open Access publications 10197/7652, Research Repository, University College Dublin.
    23. Aloke Ghosh & Antonio Marra & Doocheol Moon, 2010. "Corporate Boards, Audit Committees, and Earnings Management: Pre‐ and Post‐SOX Evidence," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(9‐10), pages 1145-1176, November.
    24. Sir Adrian Cadbury, 2000. "The Corporate Governance Agenda," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(1), pages 7-15, January.
    25. Vollmer, Hendrik, 2019. "Accounting for tacit coordination: The passing of accounts and the broader case for accounting theory," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 15-34.
    26. Hines, Ruth D., 1988. "Financial accounting: In communicating reality, we construct reality," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 251-261, April.
    27. Libby, Robert & Rennekamp, Kristina M. & Seybert, Nicholas, 2015. "Regulation and the interdependent roles of managers, auditors, and directors in earnings management and accounting choice," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 25-42.
    28. Klein, April, 2002. "Audit committee, board of director characteristics, and earnings management," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 375-400, August.
    29. Margaret M. Cullen & Niamh M. Brennan, 2017. "Differentiating control, monitoring and oversight," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 30(8), pages 1867-1894, October.
    30. Beattie, Vivien, 2014. "Accounting narratives and the narrative turn in accounting research: Issues, theory, methodology, methods and a research framework," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 111-134.
    31. repec:dau:papers:123456789/1373 is not listed on IDEAS
    32. Xie, Biao & Davidson, Wallace III & DaDalt, Peter J., 2003. "Earnings management and corporate governance: the role of the board and the audit committee," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 295-316, June.
    33. Unerman, Jeffrey, 2020. "Risks from self-referential peer review echo chambers developing in research fields," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(5).
    34. Steven Dellaportas, 2013. "Conversations with inmate accountants: Motivation, opportunity and the fraud triangle," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(1), pages 29-39, March.
    35. Morten Huse & Alessandro Zattoni, 2008. "Trust, Firm Life Cycle, and Actual Board Behavior: Evidence from "One of the Lads" in the Board of Three Small Firms," International Studies of Management & Organization, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(3), pages 71-97, January.
    36. Pierre Jinghong Liang, 2004. "Equilibrium Earnings Management, Incentive Contracts, and Accounting Standards," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(3), pages 685-718, September.
    37. Stephen C. Hansen & John S. Watts, 1997. "Two Models of the Auditor †Client Interaction: Tests with United Kingdom Data," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(2), pages 23-50, June.
    38. Gavin Nicholson & Amedeo Pugliese & Pieter-Jan Bezemer, 2017. "Habitual accountability routines in the boardroom: how boards balance control and collaboration," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 30(2), pages 222-246, February.
    39. Lee D. Parker, 2007. "Boardroom Strategizing in Professional Associations: Processual and Institutional Perspectives," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(8), pages 1454-1480, December.
    40. Kyaw, Khine & Olugbode, Mojisola & Petracci, Barbara, 2015. "Does gender diverse board mean less earnings management?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 135-141.
    41. K.V. Peasnell & P.F. Pope & S. Young, 2005. "Board Monitoring and Earnings Management: Do Outside Directors Influence Abnormal Accruals?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(7-8), pages 1311-1346.
    42. Sikka, Prem, 2009. "Financial crisis and the silence of the auditors," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(6-7), pages 868-873, August.
    43. Ronen, Joshua & Tzur, Joseph & Yaari, Varda (Lewinstein), 2006. "The effect of directors' equity incentives on earnings management," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 359-389.
    44. Dellaportas, Steven, 2013. "Conversations with inmate accountants: Motivation, opportunity and the fraud triangle," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 29-39.
    45. Walker, Stephen P., 2016. "Revisiting the roles of accounting in society," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 41-50.
    46. Sumit Lodhia, 2019. "What about your qualitative cousins? Adapting the pitching template to qualitative research," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 59(1), pages 309-329, March.
    47. Martin Walker, 2013. "How far can we trust earnings numbers? What research tells us about earnings management," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(4), pages 445-481, August.
    48. Merchant, Kenneth A. & Rockness, Joanne, 1994. "The ethics of managing earnings: An empirical investigation," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 79-94.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James Jianxin Gong & S. Mark Young & Aner Zhou, 2023. "Real earnings management and the strategic release of new products: evidence from the motion picture industry," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 1209-1249, September.
    2. Yi Shen & Qingsong Ruan, 2022. "Accounting Conservatism, R&D Manipulation, and Corporate Innovation: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-25, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Abdul Ghafoor & Rozaimah Zainudin & Nurul Shahnaz Mahdzan, 2019. "Factors Eliciting Corporate Fraud in Emerging Markets: Case of Firms Subject to Enforcement Actions in Malaysia," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 587-608, December.
    2. Mohamed Khalil & Aydin Ozkan, 2016. "Board Independence, Audit Quality and Earnings Management: Evidence from Egypt," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 15(1), pages 84-118, April.
    3. Zalata, Alaa Mansour & Tauringana, Venancio & Tingbani, Ishmael, 2018. "Audit committee financial expertise, gender, and earnings management: Does gender of the financial expert matter?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 170-183.
    4. Hussein A. Abdou & Nouran N. Ellelly & Ahmed A. Elamer & Khaled Hussainey & Hassan Yazdifar, 2021. "Corporate governance and earnings management nexus: Evidence from the UK and Egypt using neural networks," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 6281-6311, October.
    5. Zhi‐Yuan Feng & Hua‐Wei Huang, 2021. "Corporate governance and earnings management: A quantile regression approach," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 5056-5072, October.
    6. Pavlopoulos, Athanasios & Magnis, Chris & Iatridis, George Emmanuel, 2017. "Integrated reporting: Is it the last piece of the accounting disclosure puzzle?," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 23-46.
    7. Mujeeb Saif Mohsen Al-Absy & Ku Nor Izah Ku Ismail & Sitraselvi Chandren, 2018. "Accounting expertise in the audit committee and earnings management," Business and Economic Horizons (BEH), Prague Development Center, vol. 14(3), pages 451-476, June.
    8. Sattar Khan & Yasir Kamal & Muhammad Abbas & Shahid Hussain, 2022. "Board of directors and earnings manipulation: evidence from regulatory change," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 1-22, December.
    9. Andreas Charitou & Irene Karamanou & Anastasia Kopita, 2018. "The determinants and valuation effects of classification choice on the statement of cash flows," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(6), pages 613-650, September.
    10. Ahsan Habib & Md. Borhan Uddin Bhuiyan, 2016. "Problem directors on the audit committee and financial reporting quality," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(2), pages 121-144, February.
    11. Fan, Yaoyao & Jiang, Yuxiang & John, Kose & Liu, Frank Hong, 2021. "From watchdog to watchman: Do independent directors monitor a CEO of their own age?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 206-229.
    12. Hermes, Cornelis & Oxelheim, L. & Randoy, Trond & Hooghiemstra, Reginald, 2015. "The impact of board internationalization on earnings management," Research Report 15010-I&O, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    13. El Diri, Malek & Lambrinoudakis, Costas & Alhadab, Mohammad, 2020. "Corporate governance and earnings management in concentrated markets," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 291-306.
    14. Hooghiemstra, Reggy & Hermes, Niels & Oxelheim, Lars & Randøy, Trond, 2019. "Strangers on the board: The impact of board internationalization on earnings management of Nordic firms," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 119-134.
    15. Nguyet T. M. Nguyen & Abdullah Iqbal & Radha K. Shiwakoti, 2022. "The context of earnings management and its ability to predict future stock returns," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 123-169, July.
    16. Emmanuel Iatridis, George, 2018. "Accounting discretion and executive cash compensation: An empirical investigation of corporate governance, credit ratings and firm value," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 29-49.
    17. Amjad Iqbal & Xianzhi Zhang & Khalil Jebran, 2015. "Corporate Governance and Earnings Management: A Case of Karachi Stock Exchange Listed Companies," Indian Journal of Corporate Governance, , vol. 8(2), pages 103-118, December.
    18. Nicolas Vlaminck & Gerrit Sarens, 2015. "The relationship between audit committee characteristics and financial statement quality: evidence from Belgium," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 19(1), pages 145-166, February.
    19. Xiao Wu, Dong & Yao, Xiao & Luan Guo, Jian, 2021. "Is Textual Tone Informative or Inflated for Firm’s Future Value? Evidence from Chinese Listed Firms," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 513-525.
    20. Susana Callao & José Ignacio Jarne, 2010. "Have IFRS Affected Earnings Management in the European Union?," Accounting in Europe, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(2), pages 159-189, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:bracre:v:53:y:2021:i:6:s0890838921000627. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/the-british-accounting-review .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.