Corporate Risk Management and Social Responsibility: the Moderating Role of Real Earnings Management

1- Companies operate in an environment where the public expects them, in addition to their ability to generate profits, to maintain a balance between business growth and social progress. Therefore, corporate social responsibility has become an inevitable priority for business leaders. Furthermore, the activities of companies are different in terms of the degree of risk-taking, and thus, risk management is of great concern for them in dynamic global environments. Organizational risk management pays special attention to more effective identification of risks and social communication of the company. Also, to reduce the effects of uncertainty on the company's performance, managers can manage profit within a framework of accounting standards by affecting the structure of actual transactions and maintaining the stock price and support of their shareholders. But what the general investors understand about social responsibility is to report the companies' financial issues transparently.
 
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
As a ranking factor instead of internal control, risk management targets the companies' strategy to manage their attitude and exposure to risk and increase their value. Theoretically, a manager's trust or willingness to participate in social responsibility relates to corporate governance and the company's executive motivations. Social responsibility is morally optional rather than morally required, and the risk management model strengthens a manager's economic incentive to allocate some company resources to social responsibility activities. The agency perspective of social responsibility argues that entrenched managers in a company with strong corporate governance may use social responsibility activities to collude with shareholders to gain higher management authority to benefit from personal interests. In other situations, managers who are ascertained of positive benefits from these activities may choose social investments even if they are not value-adding. Factors such as capital market pressure, product market competition, and job-related incentives can motivate managers to perform earnings management. When the company has more effective organizational risk management, it has more potential opportunities, so managers may be less willing to manipulate profits. Managers use actual earnings management more when the risk management system is relatively weak. Some managers believe that social responsibility can reduce the possibility of disclosure of companies' participation in earnings management by providing the interests of the beneficiaries and presenting an image of social and environmental concerns. Earnings management practices harm the collective interests of stakeholders. Hence, the managers who manipulate the profit can address the activism and vigilance of the stakeholders through social responsibility methods.
 
3- This research is a quantitative study. Its strategy is multiple linear regression and moderated regression analyses based on panel data. Needed data was gathered from 102 companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) from 2015 to 2021. Eviews software (version 12) was used to analyze the data.
 
4- RESULTS & The results show that the variable of organizational risk management has a positive and significant effect on the variable of corporate social responsibility. This result may be because risk management leads managers to social responsibility activities by creating a top-down view and guiding future harmful risks from society that may take the company off the track of success. Also, the interactive variable of actual earnings management with organizational risk management has a positive and significant effect on the variable of corporate social responsibility. The interaction of real earnings management strategy with risk management provides the necessary platform through increasing short-term productivity and consequently removing the managers' concern about maintaining their position and interests, encouraging them to carry out socially valuable activities with future benefits.
 
5- CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS
Effective organizational risk management can reduce the effects of individual and general risks on the company's social responsibility goals. Companies with more effective risk management are more willing to invest in humanitarian activities. Also, actual earnings management can affect organizational risk management preferences that are applied to increase social responsibility activities. Our results have critical strategic implications for stakeholders and regulators regarding managerial opportunism and corporate governance mechanisms. Managers should focus more on organizational risk management and actual earnings management in the framework of accounting standards to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.