Authors: Franceschetti, Bruno Maria
About the Author
Bruno Maria Franceschetti is an Assistant Professor at the Università degli Studi di Macerata, Macerata, Italy. He obtained a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Macerata, where he teaches Financial Analysis and Accounting. He is a Chartered Accountant and Statutory Auditor.
About this book
This book approaches the question of the relation between financial crises and earnings management from two philosophical perspectives: positivism and critical realism. The results obtained using the positivist approach indicate that financial crises tend to have no consistent effect on earnings quality since managers’ earnings behavior does not differ from the pre-crisis to the crisis period. The author accordingly argues against the existence of a causal law based on a constant conjunction model (i.e., whenever a financial crisis happens, earnings management occurs) and concludes that financial crises cannot be seen as the cause of earnings management. The critical realism perspective, on the other hand, casts light on managers’ reasons for acting like an earnings manager; in conjunction with the more traditional positivist approach, it assists in refuting the idea of financial crises as a generative mechanism for earnings management. The author concludes by exploring other structures at work that might be responsible for earnings management. This book will be of interest to both academics and a wide range of professionals.
Table of contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Introduction
1.1.1 The Research Question
1.2 A Brief Overview of the Book and its Structure
1.3 Theoretical Contributions of the Present Work
1.4 Practical Contributions of the Present Work
References
2 Earnings Management: Origins
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Definitions of Earnings Management, Earnings Quality, Fraud, and Earnings Manipulation
2.3 Accruals Earnings Management, Real Activities Earnings Management, and Fraudulent Financial Reporting
2.3.1 Studies Related to Accruals Earnings Management
2.3.2 Studies Related to Real Activities Earnings Management
2.3.3 Studies Related to Non-GAAP Earnings Management: Fraudulent Financial Reporting
2.4 Main Incentives to Manage Earnings and Offset Causes
2.5 Conclusion
Appendix: Earnings Management Detection Models
References
3 A Critical Realist Perspective on Earnings Management
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Critical Realism as an Alternative to Positivism
3.3 A Critical Realist Conceptualization of Powers and Tendencies
3.4 A Critical Realist Approach to Earnings Management
References
4 Financial Crisis as a Major Cause of Earnings Management: Theoretical Background and Literature Review
4.1 Theoretical Background
4.2 Literature Review
4.2.1 Methodology
4.2.2 Results
4.2.3 Discussion: Mainstream Approach to the Financial Crisis–Earnings Management Relation
References
5 Does Financial Crisis Cause Earnings Management?
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Positivist Mainstream Approach to the Research Question
5.2.1 Hypotheses Development
5.2.2 Measurement of Earnings Management: Beneish’s Model
5.2.3 Sample Selection
5.2.4 Empirical Results
5.3 Critical Realist (CR) Approach to the Research Question
5.3.1 Against the Causal Law of a Constant Conjunction Model: An Etymological Perspective
5.3.2 A New Critical Realist Conceptualization of Tendencies Applied to Earnings Management
5.4 Discussion and Conclusion
Appendix: Extended Tables
References
Series: Contributions to Management Science
Length: 161 pages
Copyright: 2018
Language: English
Publisher: Springer
Edition: 1st ed. 2018 edition (August 5, 2017)
ISBN-10: 331954120X
ISBN-13: 978-3319541204