Relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and Conservatism

Strong corporate governance structure results in better monitoring of management, timely accounting information, and increasing speed of bad news recognition in order to inform the board and taking needed action (Garcia et al, 2005). On the other hand, conservatism creates a system that prevents the managers and executives overpayment and prevents any excessive optimism (Watts, 2003). If conservatism really play a role in handling agency problems, the conflicting interests of managers and owners will increase the demand for increased conservatism. Thus, firms with better corporate governance structure, would show a higher degree of conservatism (Garcia et al, 2005). This means that there will be more expected return sensitivity to bad news compared to good news among firms with strong corporate governance structure (Basu, 1997).In this study information of 179 companies in Tehran Stock Exchange within two years 2009 and 2010, using the multiple regression analysis and cross-sectional data, mechanisms of communication between the stock's biggest shareholder, being the parent company, stock concentration, the presence of the CEO in the board, state ownership, the average stock owned by members of the board, the percentage of free float shares of the company, the presence of outside financial expert on the board of directors, the percentage of outside directors, and the auditors, the certain corporate governance mechanisms playing an important role in this regard has been studied with accounting conservatism.The results reveal that except the quality disclosure ratings and stock concentration variables, there is a significant relationship between the mechanisms of corporate governance and accounting conservatism.