Title: Earnings management through real activities versus accounting techniques: literature review

Authors: Amina Zgarni; Hassouna Fedhila

Addresses: Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunisia ' American University in North Africa, Tunisia

Abstract: Crises and financial scandals have not ceased to recur in the last two decades. A major cause of these facts is earnings management. This research aims to study the explanatory factors and the different techniques of earnings management practices, both through real activities and accounting techniques. For this, we challenge the positive theory of accounting which is based primarily on the observation of accounting practices and not on the identification of 'best' accounting practices. We enrich our analysis by reviewing the main works and models on this topic. In addition, the review of the literature allowed us to note that the majority of previous studies focused on the accounting form of earnings management rather than the real earnings management.

Keywords: earnings management; real earnings management; positive accounting theory.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2022.127183

International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 2022 Vol.29 No.3, pp.285 - 307

Received: 19 Sep 2019
Accepted: 31 Aug 2020

Published online: 25 Nov 2022 *

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