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When financial statements are public, the choice between alternative reporting regimes constitutes a signal that addresses external stakeholders. Generally, the choice of more complex regimes acts as a complement of firms' transparency. However, in the absence of audits, opportunistic behaviors could be incentivized. This study aims to test whether SMEs' choice between alternative accounting regimes is associated with earnings quality.

Drawing on the literature about accounting choices and earnings quality, this study investigates whether the same conclusions are confirmed for SMEs. Using a sample of 4,054 Italian companies and 12,114 observations, it compared four earnings quality proxies of a group of companies that opted for the “Full” rules and those of a subsample of the population of companies that applied the Simplified rules.

The results suggest that the signaling power of accounting rules' choice could lead to wrong conclusions for SMEs. Indeed, a positive relationship emerged (H1) between the choice of the “Full” rules and income smoothing behaviors, while the same choice appears to reduce the probability to disclose SPOS. Moreover, the results suggest that opportunistic behaviors are more frequent for firms that have settled in a “non-cooperative” social environment (H2).

This study could foster research on financial reporting quality in private firms.

Comparing the quality of financial statements drawn up according to two alternative accounting regimes could provide useful suggestions for both users and regulators.

The results contribute to the limited literature on the implications of differential reporting. Finally, it enriches the literature about heterogeneity in accounting quality within private firms.

This study aims to examine the timing of corporate disclosure in the context of Georgia, an emerging market where a recent reform of corporate financial transparency mandated about 80,000 private sector entities to publicly disclose their annual financial statements.

The main analysis covers more than 4,000 large, medium, small and micro private sector entities, for which the data is obtained from the Ministry of Finance of Georgia. This paper builds an empirical model of logit/probit regression, with industry fixed and random effects to investigate the drivers of the corporate disclosure timing.

Findings suggest that the mean reporting time lag is 279 days after the fiscal year-end, that is nine days after the statutory deadline. Almost one-third (30%) of the entities miss the nine-month statutory deadline, while the timely filers almost unexceptionally file immediately before the deadline. Multivariate tests reveal that voluntarily filing entities completed the process significantly faster than those mandated to do so; audited financial statements take more time to be filed, whereas those with unqualified audit opinion or audited by large/international audit firms are filed faster than their counterparts. The author concludes that despite the overall high filing rates, the timing of corporate disclosure is not (yet) efficiently enforced in practice (but is progressing over time), whereas regulatory incentives prevail over market incentives among the timely filers.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that explores corporate disclosure timing incentives in the context of Georgia. This study extends prior literature on the timing of financial information from an emerging country’s private sector perspective, with juxtaposed market and regulatory incentives.

This paper undertakes an extensive and systematic review of the literature on earnings management (EM) over the past three decades (1992–2022). Furthermore, the study identifies emerging research themes and proposes future avenues for further investigation in the realm of EM.

For this study, a comprehensive collection of 2,775 articles on EM published between 1992 and 2022 was extracted from the Scopus database. The author employed various tools, including Microsoft Excel, R studio, Gephi and visualization of similarities viewer, to conduct bibliometric, content, thematic and cluster analyses. Additionally, the study examined the literature across three distinct periods: prior to the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (1992–2001), subsequent to the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002–2012), and after the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (2013–2022) to draw more inferences and insights on EM research.

The study identifies three major themes, namely the operationalization of EM constructs, the trade-off between EM tools (accrual EM, real EM and classification shifting) and the role of corporate governance in mitigating EM in emerging markets. Existing literature in these areas presents mixed and inconclusive findings, suggesting the need for further theoretical development. Further, the study findings observe a shift in research focus over time: initially, understanding manipulation techniques, then evaluating regulatory measures, and more recently, investigating the impact of global accounting standards. Several emerging research themes (technology advancements, cross-cultural and cross-national studies, sustainability, behavioral aspects and non-financial indicators of EM) have been identified. This study subsequent analysis reveals an evolving EM landscape, with researchers from disciplines like data science, computer science and engineering applying their analytical expertise to detect EM anomalies. Furthermore, this study offers significant insights into sophisticated EM techniques such as neural networks, machine learning techniques and hidden Markov models, among others, as well as relevant theories including dynamic capabilities theory, learning curve theory, psychological contract theory and normative institutional theory. These techniques and theories demonstrate the need for further advancement in the field of EM. Lastly, the findings shed light on prominent EM journals, authors and countries.

This study conducts quantitative bibliometric and thematic analyses of the existing literature on EM while identifying areas that require further development to advance EM research.

Recent accounting literature claims that private firms’ heterogeneity influences the quality of earnings. Along with certain drivers of heterogeneity, private firms get involved in specific programs aimed at fostering their access to capital, competencies and networks (CCN programs). Such programs can enhance private firms’ exposure to stakeholders that demand higher reporting quality, affecting their financial reporting choices. Therefore, this study investigated whether membership in CCN programs affects private firms’ earnings quality.

Focusing on the ELITE program, an international platform that since 2012 aims to support the growth of the most promising SMEs, and employing different econometric specifications facing endogeneity concerns, this paper carries out a quantitative empirical analysis to test the effect of CCN programs on private firms’ earnings quality.

Employing different earnings quality measures, empirical evidence reveals that firms belonging to CCN programs experienced an improvement in their earnings quality.

Even though endogeneity concerns have been addressed, we are nevertheless aware that they might, at least partially, have affected our results.

Although the contributions of the study are mostly academic, the empirical evidence obtained also carries practical implications. CCN programs not only act, as one might assume, as catalysts for economic and dimensional growth but also contribute to better earnings quality, mitigating the information asymmetries between firms and their stakeholders.

By adding new evidence to the literature concerning the impact of private firms’ heterogeneity on earnings quality, this is the first study to analyze the impact of specific programs aimed at supporting the affiliated SMEs to foster their access to capital, competencies and networks.

In countries where disclosing and reporting matters on sustainability are optional, what are the drivers promoting voluntarily disclosing information related to social responsibility and environmental sustainability corporate environmental and social responsibility? Exploring drivers promoting the demand for voluntarily disclosing information related to social responsibility and environmental sustainability in Saudi Arabia, where regulatory and professional bodies have not mandated information on corporate environmental and social responsibility, motivates this study.

A total of 48 individuals voluntarily participated in the survey.

Findings reveal that creating a better social, ethical and mental image, building a public relations image for the company, improving stakeholder trust in the company, signaling to investors the company’s care for the earth to meet the ethical motivation of stakeholders, enhancing corporate social responsibility awareness and exhibiting surpasses the mere generation of profits, all derive such disclosure. Such disclosure also signifies the firm’s value as well as improves the overall firm’s economic performance.

Regulatory and professional bodies must issue and adopt reporting models for entities, principally private companies, whether publicly traded or not, of the content. Their reports should aim to inform users and stakeholders about fulfilling the social and environmental responsibilities of entities toward society and its members.

Out of the drivers for the demand, perceptions of elders toward meeting ethical motivation of senior management significantly differ from that of younger.

Few studies have been attempted on drivers of the demand for reporting environmental sustainability and social responsibility in an environment where such reporting is not mandated. This study offers insight from Saudi Arabian corporate reports.

This paper aims to investigate whether the perceived level of corruption influences companies' decision to address principles and standards aimed, inter alia, at fighting corruption [i.e. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), (2) United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), (3) International Standards Organisation (ISO) 26,000 and (4) Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines] in companies' sustainability reporting.

The paper uses a sample of 1,171 sustainability reports published in the year 2017 by organisations from Asia and Africa's low- and middle-income countries.

Results from the Probit model reveal that corruption negatively affects corporate sustainability reporting activity. Indeed, the more companies are exposed to high levels of corruption, the less likely they appear to engage in sustainability reporting. Furthermore, the authors find clear regional and sector-level differences in the extent to which companies engage in sustainability reporting. The results show that Asian companies operating in the agricultural and financial services sectors exhibit significantly higher reporting activity, whilst those operating in the construction and mining sectors report less than the sectors' peers.

The authors' findings provide important implications for understanding companies' behaviour in the sustainability reporting in emerging economies as well as for designing corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure initiatives in the future.

This paper provides a better understanding of the impact of corruption on companies' reporting behaviour in the context of emerging economies.

The lack of transparency contributes to the growing corruption problem in various spheres of society. This paper aims to analyse the sustainability report disclosures published by Czech companies in 2021 and registered by the Association of Social Sustainability of the Czech Republic.

Based on three hypotheses, the relationships between the level of disclosed anti-corruption information and selected variables related to the corporate environment are tested using content analysis and the Mann–Whitney test.

This paper reveals that Czech firms provide more information if they operate in a higher-risk environment (energy, materials and financial services) or are state-owned (or with a state ownership stake). It also reveals that companies participating in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (UN Global Compact and Global Reporting Initiative) increase their credibility and social responsibility with more disclosed information.

A limitation of this paper is the smaller number of selected companies matching the chosen criteria. In addition, a certain degree of subjectivity is likely to have manifested in the process of coding the reports and in the use of the content analysis method.

The paper contributes to research that addresses the fight against corruption and CSR issues with a specific study in a small, Central European country and provides new empirical data on the anti-corruption fight problem.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainable development goals (SDGs) disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

The study focuses on a sample of 95 Italian-listed companies preparing the mandatory non-financial declaration (NFD) according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards over a five-year period (2017–2021), corresponding to an unbalanced sample of 438 observations. Analyst forecast quality was proxied by earnings forecast accuracy (FA) and earnings forecast dispersion (FD), built on data retrieved from the Refinitiv database. A manual content analysis was performed on NFDs to derive an SDG disclosure score (SDGD) for each sampled company.

This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that voluntary SDG disclosure matters to the capital market in that it helps enhance the information environment of companies, evidenced by improved analyst forecast quality. In particular, this study highlighted that SDG disclosure positively influences analyst FA while negatively affecting analyst FD.

This study focuses on the Italian context, which has idiosyncratic characteristics regarding the structure of the financial market, the composition of corporate ownership and experience in non-financial reporting practices.

This study indicates to corporate managers that following GRI standards may represent the right way to better integrate SDG disclosure in corporate non-financial reports and increase the relevance of such information for investors and other capital market participants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the association between SDG disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between corporate corruption risk and environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting and if this relationship is moderated by business ethics.

Data from a sample of 347 European firms selected from the ESG Index between 2010 and 2020 were used to test the model using panel data and multiple regressions. This paper considered the feasible generalized least squares estimation for linear panel data models. A multiple regression model is used to analyze the moderating effect of business ethics on the association between corporate corruption risk and ESG reporting. For robustness analyses, the authors included the alternative measure of the dependent variable, and they applied the simultaneous equation model for the endogeneity test.

The empirical results reveal a negative relationship between corporate corruption risk and ESG reporting. Furthermore, the findings suggest that business ethics positively moderate the relationship between corporate corruption risk and ESG reporting.

This paper presents an enormous contribution to the various economic agents involved in the company. The results could attract the attention of socially responsible investors and, above all, corporate citizens. Moreover, the managers of corrupt companies could take into account the results of this study by being more committed to an optimized transparency strategy on ESG reporting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the moderating role of business ethics on the relationship between corporate corruption risk and ESG reporting in the European context. It is also the first study documenting that business ethics reinforce the relationship between firm corruption and nonfinancial information transparency. This study fills a research gap as it expands the existing literature, which generally focuses on the impact of corporate corruption on ESG reporting.

This study aims to propose a new conforming tax measure based on the work of Badertscher et al. (2019).

This study divides total tax avoidance/management (TM) into nonconforming and conforming portions through a regression. The residual of the regression is treated as the conforming tax measure. In addition, the new conforming tax measure is validated via three approaches. Then, this study examines the moderating effect of nonconforming earnings management (EM) on the relationship between conforming TM and firm performance.

The empirical results show that the model has stronger explanatory power than the model proposed by Badertscher et al. (2019). Additionally, the validation results show that the mean value of the conforming tax measure is lower in quasi-private corporations (financially constrained companies) than in matched public corporations (nonfinancially constrained companies), and firms under high market capital pressure are less motivated to engage in conforming tax practices. Furthermore, nonconforming EM positively moderates the conforming tax–ROA association, implying that nonconforming EM can reduce financial reporting costs resulting from conforming tax practices.

This study contributes to conforming tax research in the following ways. First, this study proposes a new conforming tax measure by substituting the cash book tax difference (BTD) for the BTD in the model of Badertscher et al. (2019) (“BKRW”). Second, this study demonstrates theoretically why the cash BTD should outperform the BTD in computing the BKRW conforming tax measure and confirm this empirically. Third, this study presents a three-way conceptual schema that divides corporations into two groups along each of three tax-relevant dimensions. The group of firms that use both conforming and nonconforming tax strategies have different characteristics compared to the other group. This study also validates the conforming tax measure across the two-group dichotomies.