IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/jaarpp/jaar-11-2017-0124.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Earnings management and managerial ownership in private firms

Author

Listed:
  • Steve O’Callaghan
  • John Ashton
  • Lynn Hodgkinson

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate two related questions. First, is earnings management behaviour in private firms related to managerial ownership and if so, what form does the relationship take. Second, is there evidence of opportunistic earnings management behaviour in private firms. Design/methodology/approach - This study uses univariate and multivariate (regression) methodologies to examine the association between managerial ownership and earnings management in private firms. The study employs a data set of 1,223 large private UK firms. Findings - Evidence is presented indicating opportunistic earnings management behaviour in private firms. Specifically, firms with low managerial ownership appear to engage in more earnings management when faced with poor performance. Further, when firms report income-increasing discretionary accruals, the magnitude of abnormal accruals varies non-linearly with managerial ownership. Research limitations/implications - This study is limited by availability of data on sample firm ownership. This study uses cross-sectional data due to these limitations. Further research could investigate the relationships between earnings management and classes of shareholders other than managers in private firms. Practical implications - Policy implications of this work suggest that non-managing shareholders in private firms face considerable agency costs, in particular where managerial ownership is very low or very high. Originality/value - Pervasiveness of earnings management in private firms compared to public firms is well documented in the literature. There is limited extant research on the relationship between ownership structure and earnings management in private firms. The novel aspect of this study is to present findings on the association between this behaviour, managerial ownership and firm performance in private firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Steve O’Callaghan & John Ashton & Lynn Hodgkinson, 2018. "Earnings management and managerial ownership in private firms," Journal of Applied Accounting Research, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 19(4), pages 648-668, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:jaarpp:jaar-11-2017-0124
    DOI: 10.1108/JAAR-11-2017-0124
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JAAR-11-2017-0124/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JAAR-11-2017-0124/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/JAAR-11-2017-0124?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.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ines Kahloul & Jocelyn Grira & Khawla Hlel, 2023. "The trilogy of economic policy uncertainty, earnings management and firm performance: empirical evidence from France," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 47(1), pages 184-206, March.
    2. Jani Saastamoinen & Hanna Savolainen, 2021. "Does a leopard change its spots? Auditors and lawyers as valuation experts for minority shareholders in the judicial appraisal of private firms," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3-4), pages 613-636, March.
    3. Andrzej Piosik, 2021. "Revenue Identification in Attaining Consensus Estimates on Income Predictions: The Function of Ownership Concentration and Managerial Ownership Confirmation from Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-16, December.
    4. Nguyen Anh Huu & Nguyen Linh Ha & Doan Duong Thuy, 2020. "Ownership Structure and Earnings Management: Empirical Evidence from Vietnam Real Estate Sector," Real Estate Management and Valuation, Sciendo, vol. 28(2), pages 37-51, June.
    5. Dominika Gajdosikova & Katarina Valaskova & Pavol Durana, 2022. "Earnings Management and Corporate Performance in the Scope of Firm-Specific Features," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-18, September.
    6. Andrzej Piosik & Ewa Genge, 2019. "The Influence of a Company’s Ownership Structure on Upward Real Earnings Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-24, 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:eme:jaarpp:jaar-11-2017-0124. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.