Essay on Ethics of Earnings Management

If some research is undertaken that provides evidence that capital markets do not always behave in accordance with the Efficient Market Hypothesis, does this invalidate research that adopts an assumption that capital markets are efficient?

When analysts question a firm’s earnings quality, it raises concerns regarding under or over aggressive accounting practices that may be allowing the firm to manipulate the earnings. Earnings quality is defined as the strength of the current earnings in being used to predict future earnings and cash flows. Since earning quality is indicative of future performance, analysts are more likely to address issues that have substantial impact on the earnings quality. An issue arises when the nature of the earnings is questioned. While permanent earnings are part of normal operations, any irregular, one time earnings can skew the earnings, making the firm look more profitable than it is. This is due to the inability to recreate similar one-time transactions that will give rise to such numbers. Investors prefer predictable

Understandably, there are a variety of ways in which a company can manage their earnings, and if accomplished successfully, the results can be highly profitable. Not all techniques are fraudulent, as effective earnings management is considered good for business and shareholders. Income smoothing is a specific example of permissible earnings management that involves controlling fluctuations in net income to make earnings less variable over a given period of time (Goel & Thakor, 2003). Smoothing is acceptable as long as it adheres to the restrictions of U.S. GAAP, which maintains that all revenues and expenses are accounted for in a defined fashion. There are a lot of incentives in figuring how to effectively smooth income, as substantial value can be created through the successful arrangement of financial transactions. Management is able to make more intelligent decisions with regards to the future of the firm if the earnings are able to match the forecasts. One instance this is seen is when management is faced with the decision to smooth total income or

Such an intense focus has been placed on quarterly earnings as an indication of a company’s success by everyone from analysts to executives that ethics have for the most part been thrown out the window, sacrificed to the all important number, i.e. earnings per share. This is the theory in Alex Berenson’s book “The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America.” This number has become part of a game to be played, a figure to be manipulated – beat the number and Wall Street all but throws a parade, miss it and a company’s stock may be abandoned. Take into account the incentives that executives have to beat the number and one can find plenty of reasons to manage earnings.

Most corporate financing decisions in practice reduce to a choice between debt and equity. The finance manager wishing to fund a new project, but reluctant to cut dividends or to make a rights issue, which leads to the decision of borrowing options. The issue with regards to shareholder objectives being met by the management in making financing decisions has come to become a major issue of recent times. This relates to understanding the concept of the agency problem. It deals with the separation of ownership and control of an organisation within a financial context. The financial manager can raise long-term funds internally, from the company’s cash flow, or externally, via the capital market, the market for funds

I included some information of earnings management first. Earnings management is managers’ accounting choices. Managers may use different accounting techniques to create some opportunities within the boundary of GAAP, so that they can make financial statements look better. I stated the top 5 techniques of earnings management and relevant examples:

The accounting system we use today started in Venice in renaissance period over 520 years ago. The trade business increased hugely during this time and all the financial recordings had to be written down to help people see how their business is doing. During that time in 1494 the first book about was published in accounting by Luca Paciolli and was called “The Collected Knowledge of Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportion and Proportionality”. He was called “The father of Accounting” and most of his described principles have been used up until this day.

Limited access to records and assets can really make it hard for someone in an organization to commit fraud. If the accounting department never has access to the actual money and the people in charge of the money have no access to the accounting of the organization other than sending them the info over that the

Ethics in any industry is important, but for Accounting professionals and those in need of their services, it is a particularly stressed element. Information provided by accountants is used to make major decisions, including investing, downsizing, expanding, etc, so accountants are expected to be competent, reliable, and have a high degree of professional integrity. Because of these high expectations, the professional accountancy industry, like many other professions, has adopted professional codes of ethics (Woelfel, 1986). These ethical codes go above and beyond the requirements for state or federal laws and regulations. There are several professional organizations within the

This study aims to understand what effect has an ethical framework in accounting. In particular, we examine the influence of ethics on earnings management, financial reporting, and external accounting. Today, the commercial environment reveals the unethical behavior of management and accountants through the manipulation of accounting records to boost the company’s stock price, falsified financial statements to mislead investors, failure of auditors to correct errors and omissions due to client’s pressure and personal material interests.

Imagine trusting your hard-earned money like your retirement savings to a financial adviser or Certified Public Accountants (CPA) only to lose it all in a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. In today’s world of business many organizations, financial planners and accountants are in the news due to the financial ethical breaches that have affected their customers, employees, and the general public. A CPA has to be responsible for their audits and take any punishments as a result of their mistakes, incompetence or illegal actions. CPAs are expected to have integrity in their work,

As stated in Exhibit 3, Earnings management is the managerial use of discretion to influence reported earnings. Within the accrual accounting system, managers have significant discretion with their firms’ accounting choices. Management has the ability to make choices that can opportunistically lead to higher or lower reported earnings. Richard 's and Ira Zar’s (CFO) actions would not change if these results were the result of GAAP flexibility because he violated the rules of accounting, the conceptual framework principle of neutrality in numerous ways to report the financial results that CA did under false pretenses. It would be one thing if CA garnered these results through legitimate business decisions versus using accounting tactics like changes in accounting estimates or outright fraud as in the use of the 35 day Month. The purpose of which was solely to allow CA to meet or exceed analysts’ estimates.

No man can be certain beyond a shadow of a doubt how he will react in any given situation. One can know how he would hope to react; however, until the circumstances are in place behavior can not be entirely predicted. A person’s reaction in the direst of moments is in fact the heart of who they are. While reactions are spontaneous, actions are not and the decisions to act or not to act

Yes, it is clearly unethical to intentionally understate earnings since the management makes representations that the financial statements are complete and accurate. It is obvious that intentionally understating earnings is done to allow the company to later overstate earnings by using falsified reserves to cover the inadequate current period earnings.

The key to the article “Cooking the Books” is to cover the business ethics of an accounting manager ordering one of his accountants to falsifying a company’s accounting ledger. The Generally Accepted Accounting Principle of expense recognition was not followed. The accounting manager was attempting to commit fraud for personal gain, he does this by manipulating the books to show higher revenue in order to meet the volume for management bonus. The accounting manager also created a hostile working environment by threating his accountant’s job security if he didn’t comply with his orders. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act will also be explored to see if there was a violation due to the unethical behavior of the