Identifying the Network of Corporate Board Members and Its Impact on Earnings Management: Social Network Analysis Approach

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the position of companies in the social network of Iranian stock market companies and accrual earnings management.

This research is a quantitative research based on the type of data collected and analyzed. The statistical population is all the companies in the Iranian capital market. In the period 2014-2017, the data were collected and analyzed.

The research findings show that the variables of degree centrality and closeness are inversely and directly related to the accrual earning management, respectively. In the structure of the social network of Iranian stock market companies, with the increase in the degree of centrality, companies have less absolute value of accruals and the use of accruals earnings management practices is reduced, which is influenced by legislators' supervision and political cost considerations for this group of companies. On the other hand, companies with higher proximity centrality, which also have more influence in the network, have a higher absolute value of accruals. Also, the results of the control variables show that the variables of asset rate of return and size of the company have a positive and significant effect on accruals.

So far, there is little knowledge about the network-based approach in order to understand the behavior of companies' earning management due to their position in the social network structure of companies in the Iranian stock market. Therefore, the present study shows that due to the network structure of companies in the Iranian stock market, which has a central core and a semi-dense structure around the core, there is an inverse relationship between the degree of centrality of the company and the management of accruals by them. But moving away from the network center in companies with a higher proximity centrality increases the use of bold tools in accrual earnings management