The Impact of CFOs' Incentives and Earnings Management Ethics on their Financial Reporting Decisions: The Mediating Role of Moral Disengagement

Verfasser / Beitragende:
[Cathy Beaudoin, Anna Cianci, George Tsakumis]
Ort, Verlag, Jahr:
2015
Enthalten in:
Journal of Business Ethics, 128/3(2015-05-01), 505-518
Format:
Artikel (online)
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024 7 0 |a 10.1007/s10551-014-2107-x  |2 doi 
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245 0 4 |a The Impact of CFOs' Incentives and Earnings Management Ethics on their Financial Reporting Decisions: The Mediating Role of Moral Disengagement  |h [Elektronische Daten]  |c [Cathy Beaudoin, Anna Cianci, George Tsakumis] 
520 3 |a Despite regulatory reforms aimed at inhibiting aggressive financial reporting, earnings management persists and continues to concern practitioners, regulators, and standard setters. To provide insight into this practice and how to mitigate it, we conduct an experiment to examine the impact of two independent variables on CFOs' discretionary expense accruals. One independent variable, incentive conflict, is manipulated at two levels (present and absent)—i.e., the presence or absence of a personal financial incentive that conflicts with a corporate financial incentive. The other independent variable is CFOs' earnings management ethics ("EM-Ethics,” high vs. low), measured as their assessment of the ethicalness of key earnings management motivations. We find that incentive conflict and EM-Ethics interact to determine CFOs' discretionary accruals such that (a) in the presence of incentive conflict, CFOs with low (high) EM-Ethics tend to give into (resist) the personal incentive by booking higher (lower) expense accruals; and (b) in the absence of an incentive conflict, CFOs with low (high) EM-Ethics tend to give into (resist) the corporate incentive by booking lower (higher) expense accruals. We also find support for a mediated-moderation model in which CFOs' level of EM-Ethics influences their moral disengagement tendencies which, in turn, differentially affect their discretionary accruals, depending on the presence or absence of incentive conflict. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. 
540 |a Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, 2014 
690 7 |a Dispositional ethics  |2 nationallicence 
690 7 |a Earnings management  |2 nationallicence 
690 7 |a Incentives  |2 nationallicence 
690 7 |a Moral disengagement  |2 nationallicence 
700 1 |a Beaudoin  |D Cathy  |u Accounting Faculty, School of Business Administration, University of Vermont, 05405, Burlington, VT, USA  |4 aut 
700 1 |a Cianci  |D Anna  |u Accounting Faculty, School of Business, Wake Forest University, 27109, Winston Salem, NC, USA  |4 aut 
700 1 |a Tsakumis  |D George  |u Department of Accounting & MIS, Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware, 19716, Newark, DE, USA  |4 aut 
773 0 |t Journal of Business Ethics  |d Springer Netherlands  |g 128/3(2015-05-01), 505-518  |x 0167-4544  |q 128:3<505  |1 2015  |2 128  |o 10551 
856 4 0 |u https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2107-x  |q text/html  |z Onlinezugriff via DOI 
898 |a BK010053  |b XK010053  |c XK010000 
900 7 |a Metadata rights reserved  |b Springer special CC-BY-NC licence  |2 nationallicence 
908 |D 1  |a research-article  |2 jats 
949 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |F NATIONALLICENCE  |b NL-springer 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 856  |E 40  |u https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2107-x  |q text/html  |z Onlinezugriff via DOI 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 700  |E 1-  |a Beaudoin  |D Cathy  |u Accounting Faculty, School of Business Administration, University of Vermont, 05405, Burlington, VT, USA  |4 aut 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 700  |E 1-  |a Cianci  |D Anna  |u Accounting Faculty, School of Business, Wake Forest University, 27109, Winston Salem, NC, USA  |4 aut 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 700  |E 1-  |a Tsakumis  |D George  |u Department of Accounting & MIS, Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware, 19716, Newark, DE, USA  |4 aut 
950 |B NATIONALLICENCE  |P 773  |E 0-  |t Journal of Business Ethics  |d Springer Netherlands  |g 128/3(2015-05-01), 505-518  |x 0167-4544  |q 128:3<505  |1 2015  |2 128  |o 10551