Search results

Prior studies generally focus on income smoothing through discretionary accruals and document that managers have incentives to smooth earnings due to various reasons. This paper aims to focus on income smoothing through research and development (R&D) management and examine whether and how income smoothing through R&D management affects credit rating agencies’ perception of firm risk.

The authors use financial statement data from the CRSP/Compustat Merged data set universe for the period from 1992 to 2019 after excluding financial and utility industries. The authors follow the model for credit ratings used in previous literature to test the hypothesis. Specifically, the authors use an ordered probit model to express credit ratings as a function of income smoothing attributes.

The authors find that R&D-based income smoothing improves a firm’s credit rating. However, the positive effect of R&D-based income smoothing on credit ratings is less than that of accruals-based income smoothing. This study also shows that the positive effect of R&D-based income smoothing is more pronounced for firms less subject to opportunistic incentives, further strengthening the notion that managers smooth earnings through R&D management to provide more informative earnings.

This study contributes to the income smoothing literature in several ways. First, the authors contribute to the research by showing that managers’ income smoothing activity through R&D management positively affects firms’ credit rating. Second, the authors also document the relative benefits of the two different income smoothing techniques in terms of improving credit agencies’ perception of firms’ creditworthiness.

This study addresses the prevailing complexities and limitations in estimating and managing construction overhead costs (COCs) in the existing literature, with the purpose of enhancing the accuracy of cost performance indicators in construction project management.

An innovative approach is proposed, employing the activity-based costing (ABC) accounting method combined with building information modelling (BIM) to assign real overhead costs to project activities. This study, distinguished by its incorporation of a real case study, focuses on an administrative building with a four-story concrete structure. It establishes an automated method for evaluating project cost performance through the detailed analysis of earned value management (EVM) cost indicators derived from ABC results and BIM data.

The results show that the ABC integration improves the accuracy of cost performance indicators by over 9%, revealing the project's true cost index for the first time and demonstrating the substantial value of the approach in construction engineering and management.

The current study highlights a notable gap in the existing literature, addressing the challenges in onsite overhead cost estimation and offering a solution that incorporates the state-of-the-art techniques.

The proposed method has significant implications for project managers and practitioners, enabling better-informed decisions based on precise cost data, ultimately leading to enhanced project outcomes.

This research uniquely combines ABC and BIM, presenting a pioneering solution for the accurate estimation and management of COCs in construction projects, adding significant value to the current body of knowledge in this field.

This study examines the investment horizon influence, mediated by market optimism, on earnings management based on accruals and real activities. Based on short-termism, the authors argue that earnings management increases in optimistic periods to boost corporate profits.

The authors analyzed non-financial Brazilian publicly traded firms from 2010 to 2020 by estimating industry-fixed effects of groups of short- and long-horizon firms to compare their behavior on earnings management practices during bullish moments. For robustness, the authors used alternate measures and trade-off analyses between earning management practices.

The findings indicate that, during bullish moments, companies prioritize managing their earnings through real activities management (RAM) rather than accruals earnings management (AEM), depending on their time horizon. The results demonstrate the trade-off between earnings management practices.

This study presents limitations when using proxies for earnings management and investor sentiment.

Investors and regulators should closely monitor companies' operations, especially during bullish market conditions to prevent fraud.

The study addresses investor sentiment mediation in the earnings management discussion, introducing the short-termism approach.

This paper aims to investigate the theoretical and practical links between digital twin (DT) application in heritage facilities management (HFM) from a life cycle management perspective and to signpost the future development directions of DT in HFM.

This state-of-the-art review was conducted using a systematic literature review method. Inclusive and exclusive criteria were identified and used to retrieve relevant literature from renowned literature databases. Shortlisted publications were analysed using the VOSviewer software and then critically reviewed to reveal the status quo of research in the subject area.

The review results show that DT has been mainly adopted to support decision-making on conservation approach and method selection, performance monitoring and prediction, maintenance strategies design and development, and energy evaluation and management. Although many researchers attempted to develop DT models for part of a heritage building at component or system level and test the models using real-life cases, their works were constrained by availability of empirical data. Furthermore, data capture approaches, data acquisition methods and modelling with multi-source data are found to be the existing challenges of DT application in HFM.

In a broader sense, this study contributes to the field of engineering, construction and architectural management by providing an overview of how DT has been applied to support management activities throughout the building life cycle. For the HFM practice, a DT-cum-heritage building information modelling (HBIM) framework was developed to illustrate how DT can be integrated with HBIM to facilitate future DT application in HFM. The overall implication of this study is that it reveals the potential of heritage DT in facilitating HFM in the urban development context.

In this study, the author examines the effect of managers’ perception of product market competition on accruals and real earnings management.

The author develops a new text-based measure of the emphasis managers place on product market competition by conducting a textual analysis of firms’ 10-K filings. Using this measure, the author conducts a battery of econometric analyses and robustness checks to investigate the impact of this measure of product market competition on measures of accruals and real earnings management.

This study finds robust evidence that when management perceives more competitive threats, they are more likely to engage in accruals-based earnings manipulation but are less likely to engage in real earnings management activity. The author argues that these findings are due to managers’ career concerns enticing them to manage earnings via accrual when competition is high, but that greater product market competition discourages real earning management activity as it can diminish firms’ competitiveness.

The findings of this paper have important policy and practical implications since it signals that managers’ perceptions of product market competition is able to affect accounting choices, information environments and economic outcomes in firms.

This study develops a new text-based measure of managers’ perception of product market competition with the aid of GPT-4. The author then using this measure provides firm-level evidence on how this relates to earnings management.

Accounting scandals and earnings management problems at large firms such as Global Crossing and Enron have resulted in lots of wealth loss not only to corporate investors but also led tremendous damage to societies. Hence, policymakers and academic researchers have started to explore mechanisms to prevent improprieties in financial reporting and further enhance firm value. Using data from United States (US)-listed companies between 2000 and 2018, this article explores the effect of ex-military executives on earnings quality, the role of financial analysts in their interplay and the firm value implication of earnings quality driven by ex-military executives.

This study employs a firm fixed-effects model to validate the main conjecture and adopts the weighted least squares, Granger causality analysis, instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching, entropy balancing approach and dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to address robustness and endogeneity issues.

Authors reveal that companies run by ex-military senior executives exhibit lower levels of accruals-based and real earnings management than those without. The effect of management military leadership on constraining earnings management is more prominent for companies with low analyst coverage, suggesting that the military experience of executives could be a substitute for external monitoring. Authors also find that these ethical managers alleviate the negative impact of earnings management on firm value and that companies managed by these managers exhibit higher firm performance.

This study highlights the importance of the intrinsic motivation behind the effect of military experience on senior managers' personalities and offers essential stakeholder-related implications regarding the effect of military experience. The military experience of senior managers helps facilitate the attainment of broader corporate governance and economic objectives.

This article adds new insights to the literature on the role of managerial military experience in decision-making processes, financial reporting outcomes and firm performance by employing the upper echelons and imprinting theoretical perspectives.

The present paper aims to focus on the role which German controllers play so far in the process of sustainable transformation in for-profit organizations, the current obstacles to a wider engagement here and ways to overcome these obstacles.

The analysis combines two qualitative study designs. Empirical data is generated via a job advertisement analysis and an explorative survey with 107 subjects from management accounting/controlling and sustainability management. The generated data is interpreted against the background of the theory of institutional logics and Abbott’s (1988) theory of professional jurisdiction.

We find that controllers are in a state of tension. On the one hand, the pressure to integrate sustainability into companies is increasing. On the other hand, they seem to be rather reluctant to get involved. The institutional logics that shape their profession play an important role here, as does an unclear relationship with the sustainability department, which has its own claims here. Based on these observations, we identify the core obstacles to the transformation of the controllers’ profession and discuss solutions which can guide the transformation of this profession.

The present paper provides insights from a unique combination of different quantitative study designs and different perspectives on the possible role that controllers can play in advancing sustainable transformation in companies.

The authors examine whether internal corporate governance mechanisms are effective in curbing cash flow manipulation through real activities, misclassification, and timing.

The sample comprises of firms from an emerging market, India with data for years 2004 through 2015. The authors use the methodology given in Roychowdhury (2006).

The authors find that corporate boards in India play an active role in curbing cash flow manipulation through real activities but fail to control cash flow manipulation through misclassification and timing.

The study suggests that corporate boards should pay more attention to the reported cash flow numbers. Regulators can reduce the opportunities available for cash flow misclassification by fixing relevant accounting and governance norms. Auditors can also help by critically focusing on the cash flow classifications presented by management.

This study, to the authors’ knowledge, is the first study that talks about the role of internal governance in a trade-off between different cash flow manipulation techniques.

This paper aims to test a contingency-based path model that concurrently links the role of management accountants (MA) and advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) to cost system sophistication (CSS), as well as linking the latter to improvements in organisational performance through improving cost management and product planning decisions.

This paper used the questionnaire survey strategy to collect data from 373 medium and large manufacturing business units based in the UK, then subjected the data to structural equation modelling analysis to test a contingency-based path model.

The results show that the role of MAs and AMTs positively influence CSS. Moreover, it was found that the latter is positively associated with improvements in cost management decisions which, in turn, lead to improvements in organisational performance. However, no support was found for the association between the level of CSS and improvements in product planning decisions, although the latter was found to be positively associated with organisational performance. These results confirm the theory and empirical findings regarding the role that MAs and AMTs play in designing the cost accounting system, and support the argument that adopting sophisticated cost systems does not lead directly to improvements in organisational performance, unless the benefits of such systems, in terms of improved decision-making and cost applications, are used.

This research contributes to the literature by testing a contingency-based path model that incorporates hitherto underexamined contextual factors, namely, the role of MAs and AMTs; examining the effect of CSS on a critical output, organisational performance and the mechanisms of this effect; and considering the complexity of the business environments through the concurrent testing of the relationships involved in the research model.

In light of the key role attributed to the board of directors as a monitoring tool to constrain earnings management practices, this study aims to examine the effect of some board attributes on accrual-based earnings management and real earnings management in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) context, whose institutional, economic and legal environment is markedly different from that of most organization for economic cooperation and development countries.

The authors selected a sample of 161 nonfinancial companies from nine MENA countries between 2014 and 2021 (corresponding to an unbalanced data panel of 486 observations). The authors used the generalized least squares regression test to examine the relationship between board attributes and earnings management.

The authors found that three board attributes (size, independence and gender diversity) have no effect on both types of earnings management practices, while CEO duality has no effect on accrual-based earnings management but has a significant and negative effect on real earnings management. Overall, the results suggest that most board attributes do not play a crucial role in reducing earnings management.

The results provide valuable insights into the universal role of corporate governance mechanisms and raise questions about the role of the board of directors in improving reporting quality in the MENA context.

Regulators should adapt corporate governance mechanisms to the characteristics of the institutional context in which they are inserted.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the effect of various board characteristics on both types of earnings management practices in the MENA context. It also provides the first empirical evidence of the relationship between board gender diversity and earnings management in the MENA region.