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The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of real earnings management by private and public firms in a unique institutional setting, which is the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The paper also compares the level of real earnings management between public and private firms in the GCC area.

The GCC area is a unique setting to investigate the use of real earnings management because of the low enforcement of reporting standards and supervisory rules, lack of sophisticated financial analysis, specialized media tools and high concentration of capital ownership. The authors use different models of real earnings management proposed by Roychowdhury, 2006, cash flow management, productions cost management and discretionary expenses management to examine the use of real earnings management.

The paper documents evidence consistent with private and public firms using real earnings management to influence their earnings figures. The paper also shows that the level of real earnings management is higher for private firms compared to public firms when cash flow management and discretionary expenses management models are used. The production cost model results show evidence consistent with public firms only engaging in real earnings management through production cost reduction.

The results of this study might not be applicable to other emerging markets.

The findings of this study should promote a general understanding of firms’ behavior in unique environment such as GCC countries. Regulators in the GCC region should be aware that real earnings management techniques have been used by firms and that extra caution is required when auditing or analyzing the financial information of private and public firms in the GCC market.

This paper contributes to the literature in many aspects. First, it provides additional evidence on the use of earnings management in unique market contexts outside the USA and Europe. The GCC markets share many common characteristics that make them interesting settings to be investigated. Second, this paper adds more evidence on the use of earnings management between public and private firms. In this regard, the paper adds additional evidence in the discussions proposed by Ball and Shivakumar (2005) and Givoly et al. (2010) who use two competing perspectives to investigate earnings quality in public and private firms: the demand hypothesis and the opportunistic behavior hypothesis.

Prior studies document that managers engaged in shifting of non-operating revenue to operating revenue (revenue shifting) and shifting of operating expenses to non-operating expenses (expense shifting (ES)) within income statement to report inflated operating profits of firms. This study aims to identify the factors affecting revenue shifting and ES.

The operating revenue model (Malikov et al., 2018) and the core earnings expectation model (McVay, 2006) are used for measuring revenue shifting and ES, respectively. The panel data regression models are used to analyze the data for this study.

The study results show that large and old firms are engaged in revenue shifting, whereas small and young firms prefer ES over revenue shifting for reporting inflated operating profits. These results imply that firms choose the shifting strategy based on relative advantage and ease in execution. The results are robust after controlling for accruals earnings management, real earnings management and endogeneity bias.

It suggests investors minutely investigate the operating performance metrics of initial public offering firms that are relatively small and young while buying their shares. Besides, findings suggest accounting standard setters make more mandatory disclosure requirements for recording expense and revenue items in the income statement to curb this corporate misfeasance of classification shifting.

This is among the earlier attempts to identify firm-specific factors that incentivize firms to prefer one form of shifting over another. Second, the study jointly examines both forms of shifting by taking a uniform sample of firms over the same period. Most of the prior studies have examined one form at a time.

The purpose of this study is to compare learner experiences of recorded instructional videos (DVDs) with Machinima.

In this exploratory study, sets of learning sequences in management skills training were delivered to 32 learners using both methods, and learner reactions were gathered using post-event interviews.

Analysis of learner responses showed that participants prefer Machinima as a learning delivery mechanism. Participants also reported being better able to concentrate on the message of the Machinima learning sequences.

The sample was not representative, being a convenience sample derived by open invitation from cohorts of two master’s degree programmes conducted at the School of Business, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co. Kildare. The age range of the participants was significantly skewed toward a younger age grouping. No learning test was given to assess the teaching efficacy of the methods. Implications for practice include using Machinima to model desirable behaviours to trainees. Future research should extend the research to other settings.

Research should be considered into the potential for Machinima to be considered as a replacement for DVD in management training. Sufficient encouragement arises from this study to suggest that Machinima contains none of the distractions of DVD that are recorded in this study. In addition, many organisations seek to utilise training materials with diverse audiences.

Originality of the study stems from the potential replacement of DVD with Machinima in learning.

This study aims to investigate earnings management practice of classification shifting of revenues in Chinese-listed firms.

The study employs a dataset of 2,920 A-listed firms from Chinese stock exchanges of Shanghai and Shenzhen for the period of 2003–2019. We apply both univariate and panel regression analysis by using fixed effect estimation with robust standard errors.

Our findings reveal that firms misclassify revenues by taking advantage of the flexibility provided by applicable financial reporting standards. The empirical evidence obtained through regression analysis suggest that managers reclassify non-operating revenues as operating revenue to alter the economic reality while seeking the advantage of financial reports users’ vulnerability for valuing the upper half of income statement items more as compared to lower part. The results further indicate that international financial reporting standards adoption inhibits the earnings management practices using classification shifting of revenues. It is also concluded that firms, which are suffering losses or having low growth, are more persistently involved in misclassification of revenues.

The study is unique from the point of view that it investigates earnings management from the prospective of revenue’s classification in an emerging market characterized by various market imperfections such as lower investor protection and higher information asymmetry.

The authors aim at investigating different forms of classification shifting (CS). CS is a novel form of earnings management under which managers misclassify income statement line items and cash flow statement line items with an intent to report favorable operating performance of firms. In particular, the authors check the existence of revenue misclassification, expense misclassification and cash flows misclassification among Indian firms by taking the uniform sample of firms over a single period.

Operating revenue model (Malikov et al., 2018), core earnings expectation model (McVay, 2006) and operating cash flows model (Roychowdhury, 2006) are employed for measuring revenue misclassification, expense misclassification and cash flows misclassification, respectively. The panel data regression models are used to analyze the data for this study.

Based on the sample of 12,870 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed firm-years observations between 2010 and 2018, we find that, on average, Indian firms are engaged in revenue misclassification rather than expense misclassification to report inflated core earnings. Firms are found to be engaged in cash flows misclassification too. Besides, we find that magnitude of shifting is greater among larger firms. Results also establish that adoption of Ind AS increases the scope of shifting practices. These results are based on several robustness checks.

The results suggest that investors conduct a comprehensive review of the items of financial statements before using them in their portfolio valuation. It suggests auditors check the basis of revenue classification and standard-setting authorities, like ICAI in India, to make more mandatory disclosure requirements for classification of revenues and cash flows. It suggests lenders not to make lending decisions by looking at the operating performance metrics, as CS is the most preferred tool to positively influence the perception of lenders toward operating performance.

It is the first study that investigates different forms of classification shifting jointly for a sample of firms. Most of the earlier studies have examined one kind of classification shifting at a time. This study adds to the existing literature on earnings management by documenting that some firm-specific factors pressurize firms to prefer one form of shifting over another to report inflated core earnings.

Attempts to investigate differences in marketing imagery that exist between New Zealand produced and foreign music videos. Explores marketing imagery and role‐model behaviour differences by genre. Looks at culture by genre differences in consumption imagery. Indicates that New Zealand videos contained fewer depictions of alcohol, or weapons, drugs and tobacco or heavy rock and rap music than in foreign videos. Suggests that, by genre, rap has more sunglasses, earrings and jewellery than heavy rock or pop music. Provides directions for future research.

This study explores the relationship between leverage and earnings management in the context of Palestinian-listed companies, while also investigating whether audit industry specialization influences this relationship.

The data used in this study are extracted from public financial reports of 39 firms listed on Palestine Stock Exchange (PEX), spread across the service, insurance, industry and investment sectors, for the time period 2011–2022. A model is developed to test 4 hypotheses about the relationships between long-term and short-term debts, and earnings management, and then to examine the influence of audit industry specialization on these relationships.

The results depict a significant, negative relationship between long-term debt and earnings management. Whereas the association between short-term debt and earnings management is insignificant. Audit industry specialization is proven to have no influence on the relationships between the independent and the dependent variables. Results are robust for firms that changed their accounting policies and using different audit industry specialization proxies.

The association between leverage and earnings management is a significant research topic, given that previous research identifies credit ratings and debt covenant violations as key factors which motivate earnings management. This paper fills a substantial research gap by examining the relationship between the two variables in the context of Palestinian-listed firms, while emphasizing the distinction between long-term and short-term debts. It also highlights key relationships that have been neglected in this particular context, which adds to the body of literature. Furthermore, the research's findings provide a solid information base that is of great interest to accounting and auditing experts and that may be seriously evaluated to support and advance the PEX sector.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Compares learner experiences of recorded instructional videos (DVDs) with Machinima, digital films made in virtual worlds. Analysis of learner responses showed that participants prefer Machinima as a learning delivery mechanism. Participants also reported being better able to concentrate on the message because there were fewer distractions such as the appearance, dress and mannerisms of real actors.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.