Earnings Management and Managers' Disclosure Tone Inconsistency: The Moderating Role of Manager Myopia

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of profit management on managers' disclosure tone inconsistency and to investigate the moderating effect of manager's myopia. According to agency theory, managers' tone in qualitative disclosures may be due to manager's personal interests and with the intention of deceiving the market, and according to behavioral theory, managers' tone may be due to manager's personal and psychological characteristics. There are different views regarding the managers' disclosure tone inconsistency. The first point of view considers its positive side and believes that the manager's disclosure tone is in line with signaling the market and reduces information asymmetry. The second point of view considers its negative side and emphasizes the manager's opportunistic behavior. The third point of view suggests the involuntary tone of the manager's disclosures, which is the subject of behavioral research. In the current research, based on the opportunistic perspective, the effect of profit management on the managers' disclosure tone inconsistency, and according to the behavioral perspective, the effect of CEO myopia on the tone contradiction, as well as the effect of CEO myopia on the relationship between profit management and tone contradiction. The findings of the research also confirm these relationships. The research hypotheses were developed based on theoretical foundations and research background as follows: Hypothesis 1) Earnings management has a positive and significant effect on the managers' disclosure tone inconsistency. Hypothesis 2) The CEO's short-sightedness has a positive and significant relationship with managers' disclosure tone inconsistency. Hypothesis 3) The CEO's myopia increases the positive effect of earnings management on the managers' disclosure tone inconsistency.  In the current research, to measure the tone of the manager's disclosure in the annual reports of the board of directors to the ordinary meeting of shareholders from the dictionary of specialized words of the board of directors, to measure tone Inconsistency from the model of Hong. To measure profit management, Jones's model has been modified, and Anderson and Hsayu's model has been used to measure myopia. Data related to managers' disclosure tone was measured using Max QDA software. This software calculates the number and percentage of positive and negative words in texts in Word format. Other data have been collected by means of document mining and through Rahvard Novin software and the study of audited financial statements of companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange. To analyze the data and test the hypotheses, multiple linear regression has been used considering the fixed effects of year and industry. In this research, the data of 143 companies admitted to the Iran Stock Exchange during the years 2013 to 2014 and a total of 1411 reports were used.  The results showed that profit management and CEO myopia have a positive and significant relationship with managers' disclosure tone inconsistency, and also the CEO myopia has a positive relationship between profit management and Contrast increases the tone.  From the findings of the research, it can be concluded that in line with the agency theory and personal motives of the manager, profit management can lead to the biased tone of the managers in the explanatory reports. Also, in line with behavioral theory, myopic CEOs have more tone inconsistency in qualitative disclosures due to their emphasis on short-term future performance, and the CEO's myopia increases the positive effect of profit management on the tone inconsistency of managers. This research helps the users to understand the qualitative information so that they pay more attention to the qualitative reports presented as a valuable source of information in accordance with the increasing reaction of the market to annual quantitative reports. Based on the findings of the research, it is recommended that participants in the capital market, legislators, standard setters and other stakeholders consider the possibility of bias in managers' disclosures due to personal motives or in terms of behavioral characteristics. It is also suggested that the legislators and professional associations, by enacting laws and presenting a single standard, limit the freedom of managers in qualitative reports and the choice of words, so as to be an obstacle to control the perception of information users by managers, and that measures be taken to prevent contradictions in the tone of managers. Also, laws governing the qualitative disclosure of information should be established in accordance with existing laws and standards regarding the quantitative disclosure of information. Therefore, reviewing, revising, and improving non-quantitative information disclosure standards in financial reporting will significantly help stabilize and reduce stock market fluctuations and increase the index of shareholder protection. It is hoped that in future studies, other variables affecting tone contradiction will be investigated according to the views presented in the article, as well as the impact of financial crises on managers' disclosure tone contradiction. The most important innovation of the present research is that for the first time, it examines the effect of profit management and CEO myopia on the tone inconsistency in managers' disclosure, as well as the moderating effect of myopia and develops the related literature. Also, in this research, to reduce the limitations of common dictionaries, more than 100 positive and negative combinations were used to measure tone.