Title: The effectiveness of board of directors and family ownership: interaction and impact on the discretionary accruals

Authors: Anas Ghazalat

Addresses: Faculty of Business Studies, Accounting Department Arab Open University – Jordan Branch, P.O. Box 1339, Amman, 11953, Jordan

Abstract: Firms can curb managerial opportunistic behaviours through applying corporate governance mechanisms effectively. Using a sample of 114 Jordanian firms listed on ASE for the period from 2009 until 2015, this study investigates the combined effect of the board of directors and family ownership on the discretionary accruals. The results show that the higher effectiveness of board of directors plays a higher monitoring role to minimise discretionary accruals practices as one of the opportunistic-behaviours. Results also show that the monitoring role of the board of directors is positively moderated in firms with family ownership. This proves that board of directors as a whole in firms with family ownership is unlikely to be effective. This indicates that the corporate governance plays a pivotal role in mitigating the opportunistic behaviours and minimises the divergence gap under the traditional agency problem while it has become a legal fiction when the central-agency problem exists.

Keywords: discretionary accruals (earnings management proxy); the effectiveness of board of directors; family ownership; firm size; financial leverage; audit firm; return on assets; ASE; Amman stock exchange; random-effect GLS regression.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAAPE.2021.117573

International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation, 2021 Vol.17 No.1/2, pp.36 - 72

Accepted: 02 Apr 2020
Published online: 14 Sep 2021 *

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