Business Ethics in Providing Financial Statements: The Testing of Fraud Pentagon Theory on the Manufacturing Sector in Indonesia

Abstract

The article studies the causes and consequences of manipulating the financial statements of companies, identifies the most influential drivers of fraudulent reporting actions by employees and business owners. This research aimed to examine the effect of fraud indicators in fraud pentagon theory against the detection of fraudulent financial reporting on manufacturing companies. Independent variables in this research were variable pressure proxy by financial stability, external pressure, and financial target, opportunity proxy by nature of the industry, rationalization proxy by total accrual, capability proxy by the change of directors, and arrogance proxy by ownership by management. The dependent variable was the fraudulent financial reporting proxy by fraud score. The sample of this research used 57 manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange Effect in 2013-2015. It is found that the result of the determination coefficient test shows an adjusted R2 value of 0.068, it means that the ability of the independent variable in explaining the variants of the dependent variable is still limited, which is 6.8%. The ANOVA test, which shows the possibility of using the regression model to predict the Fraudulent Financial Report, serves as the methodological tool of the study. It is determined that pressure with proxies of financial stability (current), external pressure (Lev), and financial target (ROA), opportunity with the nature of industry (receivable) proxy, and arrogance with managerial ownership (OM) proxy do not affect fraudulent financial reporting. The result of this research showed that rationalization variables proxy by the total accrual ratio and capability proxy by the change of directors had an influence on the fraudulent financial reporting. While the pressure variable proxy by financial stability measured with the current ratio, external pressure measured with leverage ratio, financial target measured with ROA, opportunity variable proxy by nature of industry variable measured with the change in inventory ratio, and arrogance proxy by ownership by management had no influence on financial statement fraud. The results obtained can be useful both for the management of the company and for regulatory authorities in terms of understanding the growth indicators of the financial statement fraud frequency and tools to minimize their impact. Keywords: fraud, fraud pentagon, fraudulent financial reporting, financial statement fraud, leverage ratio, managerial ownership and manufacturing sector.