Author(s): Segura, Liliane ; Formigoni, Henrique ; David, Fatima ; Abreu, Rute
Date: 2018
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10314/3960
Origin: Repositório Institucional do Instituto Politécnico da Guarda
Subject(s): The Influence of Women on Earnings Management
In recent decades, earnings management has been part of discussions in accounting and financial literature (Niskanen et al., 2011). The disclosure of information and the quality of the information that is disclosed has also received a lot of attention. Investors must be concerned that the quality of information supplied by firms means, according to Healy and Whalen (1999), that the firm can manage their results in such a way as to confuse investors about their performance or to influence their contracts, based on the accounting numbers. Rafik (2002) states that earnings management is a strategy for the management of the firm and, although it is not illegal, it is considered unethical by the users of financial statements (Johari et al., 2008; Rafik, 2002). Research on women in power has, on the one hand, gained great importance in recent years: e.g. Adams and Ferreira (2009), Campbell and Minguez-Vera (2008), Carter, Sinkins and Simpson (2003), Farrell and Hersch (2005), Peni and Vähäma (2010) and Rose (2007). All have examined the effect of female executives on the firm’s performance. On the other hand, much research about the presence of women on the board still shows no consensus about its relationship with earnings management. Some researchers found a positive relationship (Scapin, Garcia-Lara and Penalval-Zuasti, 2013), others a negative one (Gulzar and Wang, 2011), and others still found no relationship at all between the presence of women on the board and earnings management (Moradi et al., 2012).
