Earnings management and managerial ownership in private firms

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate two related questions. First, is earnings management behaviour in private firms related to managerial ownership and if so, what form does the relationship take. Second, is there evidence of opportunistic earnings management behaviour in private firms.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses univariate and multivariate (regression) methodologies to examine the association between managerial ownership and earnings management in private firms. The study employs a data set of 1,223 large private UK firms.

Findings

Evidence is presented indicating opportunistic earnings management behaviour in private firms. Specifically, firms with low managerial ownership appear to engage in more earnings management when faced with poor performance. Further, when firms report income-increasing discretionary accruals, the magnitude of abnormal accruals varies non-linearly with managerial ownership.

Research limitations/implications

This study is limited by availability of data on sample firm ownership. This study uses cross-sectional data due to these limitations. Further research could investigate the relationships between earnings management and classes of shareholders other than managers in private firms.

Practical implications

Policy implications of this work suggest that non-managing shareholders in private firms face considerable agency costs, in particular where managerial ownership is very low or very high.

Originality/value

Pervasiveness of earnings management in private firms compared to public firms is well documented in the literature. There is limited extant research on the relationship between ownership structure and earnings management in private firms. The novel aspect of this study is to present findings on the association between this behaviour, managerial ownership and firm performance in private firms.

Citation

O’Callaghan, S., Ashton, J. and Hodgkinson, L. (2018), "Earnings management and managerial ownership in private firms", Journal of Applied Accounting Research, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 648-668. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAAR-11-2017-0124