Role of discretionary earning management in corporate governance-value and corporate governance-risk relationships

Abstract

PurposeCorporate governance (CG) is an ongoing interesting topic getting the attention of market participant, business regulators and researchers in today’s business environment. The purpose of this study is to analyze the moderating role of earnings management on CG-value and CG-risk relationship in the emerging economy of Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachA panel data analysis is used in this study. A panel data of 71 non-financial listed companies of Pakistan for the 2008-2017 period is considered for this study. Secondary data is collected from the annual reports of non-financial firms listed on PSX. Seven econometric equations are developed to test the research hypothesis.FindingsThe results reveal that CG significantly enhances the firm value and performance measures. Moreover, CG mitigates the practices of earning management and eliminates the risk that develops opportunistic behavior among managers to commit frauds.Practical implicationsThe results of this study suggest that the board of directors (BODs) should intensify their governance role and ensure that the executives perform their duties to maximize the wealth of the shareholders and not engage in any misrepresentation of accounts that may lower the company position and decrease the firm value. Moreover, the managers should be informed about their accountability and acknowledged that at the end of the year, they would be audited by an expert’s auditors for their responsibilities. Concerning regulatory bodies, regulatory authorities should ensure that there must be at least one independent member on the board. The better-governed system reduces both agency conflicts and enhances firm value.Originality/valueA number of studies have already been undertaken by multiple investigators to build connection among CG with firm performance, but there is not even a single study in the literature that considers CG, firm value, firm Risk and discretionary earning management as a whole in one model to generalize its results in the emerging economy of Pakistan. A fundamental element of current analyzation process addresses that this is the very first graft of study conducted in Pakistan having combination of four variables together in one revision. There is minimal work that focuses on moderating effects of earning management on the CG-value and CG-risk relationships. This study uses two standard measures of firm performance (i.e. ROA and Tobin’s Q), one proxy of earning management (DEM) and three attributes of CG (board size, audit quality and ownership structure). Previously, researchers have not investigated a model that combines variables (CG as independent and Firm performance and Firm Risk as dependent along with DEM as moderator) in a single study.