How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

This paper evaluates alternative models for detecting earnings management. The paper restricts itself to models that assume the construct being managed is discretionary accruals, since such models are commonly used in the extant accounting literature. Existing models range from simple models in which discretionary accruals are measured as total accruals, to more sophisticated models that separate total accruals into a discretionary and a non-discretionary component. Prior to this paper, there had been no systematic evidence bearing on the relative performance of these alternative models at detecting earnings management. This paper evaluates the relative performance of the competing models by comparing the specification and power of commonly used test statistics across the measures of discretionary accruals generated by each model. The specification of the test statistics is evaluated by examining the frequency with which they generate type I errors for a random sample of firm-years and for samples of firm-years with extreme financial performance. We focus on samples with extreme financial performance because the stimuli investigated in previous research are frequently correlated with financial performance. The first sample of firms are targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly overstating annual earnings and the second sample is created by artificially introducing earnings management into a random sample of firms.

Detecting Earnings Management

Corporate disclosure is critical for the functioning of an efficient capital market. Firms provide disclosure through regulated financial reports, including the financial statements, footnotes, management discussion and analysis, and other regulatory filings. In addition, some firms engage in voluntary communication, such as management forecasts, analysts? presentations and conference calls, press releases, internet sites, and other corporate reports. Finally, there are disclosures about firms by information intermediaries, such as financial analysts, industry experts, and the financial press.

Information Asymmetry, Corporate Disclosure and the Capital Markets: A Review of the Empirical Disclosure Literature

http://lib.cufe.edu.cn/upload_files/other/4_20140516025625_19.pdf

Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature $

https://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/~charvey/Research/Working_Papers/W73_The_economic_implications.pdf

The economic implications of corporate financial reporting

This study examines the relation between audit quality and earnings management. Consistent with prior research, we treat audit quality as a dichotomous variable and assume that Big Six auditors are of higher quality than non-Big Six auditors. Earnings management is captured by discretionary accruals that are estimated using a cross-sectional version of the Jones 1991 model. Prior literature suggests that auditors are more likely to object to management's accounting choices that increase earnings (as opposed to decrease earnings) and that auditors are more likely to be sued when they are associated with financial statements that overstate earnings (as compared to understate earnings). Therefore, we hypothesize that clients of non-Big Six auditors report discretionary accruals that increase income relatively more than the discretionary accruals reported by clients of Big Six auditors. This hypothesis is supported by evidence from a sample of 10,379 Big Six and 2,179 non-Big Six firm years. Specifically, clients of non-Big Six auditors report discretionary accruals that are, on average, 1.5-2.1 percent of total assets higher than the discretionary accruals reported by clients of Big Six auditors. Also, consistent with earnings management, we find that the mean and median of the absolute value of discretionary accruals are greater for firms with non-Big Six auditors. This result also indicates that lower audit quality is associated with more “accounting flexibility”.

The Effect of Audit Quality on Earnings Management

Debt covenant violation and manipulation of accruals

We define higher audit quality as greater assurance of high financial reporting quality. Researchers use many proxies for audit quality, with little guidance on choosing among them. We provide a framework for systematically evaluating their unique strengths and weaknesses. Because it is inextricably intertwined with financial reporting quality, audit quality also depends on firms’ innate characteristics and financial reporting systems. Our review of the models commonly used to disentangle these constructs suggests the need for better conceptual guidance. Finally, we urge more research on the role of auditor and client competency in driving audit quality.

A Review of Archival Auditing Research

https://www.dejongeaccountants.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/1-s2.0-S0165410114000536-main.pdf

A review of archival auditing research

We find no evidence that non-audit service fees impair auditor independence, where independence is surrogated by auditors' propensity to issue going concern audit opinions. We do find, however, that auditors are more likely to issue going concern opinions to clients paying higher audit fees, suggesting that auditors behave with relatively greater independence towards these clients. Our findings are consistent with Reynolds and Francis (2001) and suggest that market-based incentives, such as loss of reputation and litigation costs, dominate the benefits auditors are likely to receive from compromising their independence to retain clients that pay larger fees. Overall, our findings indicate that recent SEC regulations based on concerns that non-audit services impair auditor independence, are unfounded.

Mark L. DeFond

Papers

The Effect of Audit Quality on Earnings Management

Debt covenant violation and manipulation of accruals

A Review of Archival Auditing Research

A review of archival auditing research

Do Non-audit Service Fees Impair Auditor Independence? Evidence from Going-concern Audit Opinions