Open AccessFamily Ownership and Accrual-Based Earnings Management: Evidence from Tunisia
Author(s) -
Atika Ben Gamra,
Dorra Ellouze
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
asian academy of management journal of accounting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.194
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 2180-4192
pISSN - 1823-4992
DOI - 10.21315/aamjaf2021.17.1.4
Subject(s) - earnings management , accrual , corporate governance , accounting , business , chief executive officer , sample (material) , panel data , dominance (genetics) , equity (law) , position (finance) , control sample , earnings , family business , demographic economics , earnings quality , economics , finance , management , business administration , political science , biochemistry , chemistry , food science , chromatography , law , econometrics , gene
The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of family shareholding and chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics on earnings management. We use panel data for a sample of 37 Tunisian non-financial listed firms over the period 2007–2017. We contribute to the literature on corporate governance in family firms by testing the effect of the presence of a family or a founder CEO on earnings management in Tunisia. Our results show that the family ownership and the presence of a family CEO (either founder or not) are positively and significantly associated with earnings management practices. These findings suggest that families’ dominance with a significant equity stake and a CEO position under control leads to an entrenchment effect resulting in poor earnings reporting quality.