مجله پیشرفت های حسابداری
سال دوازدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 79، پاییز و زمستان 1399)

This study examines the Cosmetic earnings and debt management and the effect of Corporate Governance on them. Our approach to investigate the cosmetic earnings upward and debts downward is based on “Benford's Law”. To evaluate Corporate governance we used 4 variables: percentage of non-Executive managers, percentage of institutional shareholders, concentration of ownership, auditor type and an aggregate index. With regard to this, we tested the data gathered from 145 firms listed in Tehran’s Stock Exchange (TSE) from 2009 to 2009. Normal Z test, Chi-squared distribution and Cramer V test are used to examine and compare actual distribution numbers of earnings (loss) and debts with expected distribution (Benford's). Results show that managers manipulate the second digits of earnings upward. Nonetheless, this is not the case of losses and debts. Furthermore, the findings show that corporate governance does not diminish the managers’ opportunity in manipulating the digits of earnings (losses) and debts.

The goal of this research is to study the institutional pressures and UTAUT constructs effects on accountants' intentions of accounting information system adoption. To achieve this goal Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model (Venkatesh et. al, 2003) and Institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) have been utilized. Data is gathered by distributed questionnaires among listed companies of Tehran Stock Exchange accountants during a period of 15 months (July 2019 to October 2020) and the analysis is utilized by Spearmans' correlation coefficient. Results show that UTAUT model constructs and all kinds of institutional pressures have positive significant effects on accounting information system adoption. Results of combined model show that performance expectancy is the most effective construct (0/866) and effort expectancy (0114) is the least. Moreover, using Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests, respondents' characteristics analysis holds that although there is no significant difference among accountants' experience, significant differences have been seen in the gender and age of them.

The purpose of the present research is to introduce a fundamental factor, based on related accounting characteristics (including earnings to price, book to price, sales growth rate, accruals, investment and growth in net operating assets), as a factor in the structure of Fama and French asset pricing model. The mentioned factor has been deducted from consumption theory and accounting principles and assumptions. In order to test the hypotheses, data of 345 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) and Iran Farabourse market, during the period 2006 to 2020, were used. To evaluate the performance of the multi-factor asset pricing model, test assets were ranked in two categories (once considering expected return characteristic, and once without considering the company’s expected return characteristic). In the following, using time series regression approach, the performance of augmented multifactor asset pricing models and corresponding conventional ones are compared. The results of this research showed that development of the research models with the fundamental factor based on mentioned accounting characteristics, can lead to improving the performance of these multi-factor models in explaining the variation in (expected) stock returns, and the test assets that considered the company’s expected return performed better compared to those that did not. The findings of this study indicate that the information in the financial statements has information content and can play an undeniable role in determining the expected return.

The issue of asymmetric cost behavior has attracted much attention in management accounting literature. According to the economic theory of sticky costs, sources adjustment costs, especially employees adjustment costs, is one of the main reasons for this asymmetry. Previous studies attempting to empirically examine this theory face limitations. Therefore, this study takes a new look at this theory by using Employees Skills index for Employees adjustment costs. Theoretically, higher levels of employees’ skills are argument to increase wages stickiness. To prove this statement, the companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during the years 1391 to 1398 were examined. The results show that the level of employees skills has a positive effect on the stickiness of wages, which is consistent with the hypothesis of the research. Also, the results show that wages costs in highly skilled firms have sticky behavior, and in low skill firms, employees have no stickiness. Additional analyzes and sensitivity tests show that the results are robust enough.

The purpose of this study is to identify factors influencing the tendency to cheat in accounting by emphasizing the fraud triangle theory. Scientific and literary fraud has detrimental effects that tarnish the professional status of the scientific community. This research is in terms of practical purposes that society consists of accounting instructors of different universities in the country. For this purpose, by obtaining the opinion of 170 accounting instructors in the country in a simple random method in 2020, this issue was investigated.The effect of the dimensions of the fraud triangle including pressure (financial pressure and work pressure), opportunity (control and monitoring and technology development), and justification (unfair competition) on the tendency of fraud in accounting instructors was investigated by the partial least squares technique and structural equations in PLS software. Findings showed that there is a significant relationship between the studied factors and the tendency to cheat in accounting instructors, the severity of which is 61. Also, the study of research hypotheses showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between financial pressure (54%) and work pressure (43%) and the tendency to cheat. Also, a positive and significant relationship was observed between unfair competition and the tendency to cheat at the level of 19%. Other research findings also showed that there is no significant relationship between control and supervision and technology development with the tendency to cheat in accounting instructors. The general finding of this study indicates that more attention is paid to the tendency of fraud and plagiarism in the field of accounting and it is necessary to pay more attention to it.

Prior literature shows that a firm’s earnings tend to move with other firms in the same industry. This concept is called co-movement. So investors will be able to form an expectation of a firm’s earnings from the industry. Given that the reported earnings do reflect the flow of information to the market, the purpose of this study is investigating the effect of earnings co-movement on quarterly earnings response coefficient. The sample of this study consists of 134 listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period 2008 to 2019. The results of the first hypothesis showed that the response coefficients to quarterly earnings announcement have a positive and significant relationship with the buy and hold returns in the three-day earnings announcement window, and earnings co-movement weakens this relationship. Also, the results of testing the second and third hypotheses showed that when there is good news, earnings co-movement weakens earnings response coefficient, but under bad news, earnings co-movement has no effect on earnings response coefficient.

The act of hiding and accumulating the bad news within the company by management has led to the creation of massive negative information. The sudden outburst of this news to the market would cause a stock price crash. In this regard, information disclosure about the risks faced by the company can lead to transparency of information and thus reduce the stock price crash risk. The goal of this research is to survey the effect of disclosure of risk and its types on stock price crash risk. In this study, 548 company-years during the period from 2011 to 2019 have been selected using systematic deletion method and research hypotheses have been tested using regression based on panel data with fixed effects. The results indicate that the disclosure of total risk has a negative and significant effect on the stock price crash risk. types of risk disclosures including financial risk, non-financial operating risk and strategic non-financial risk have a negative and significant effect on stock price crash risk.

Theoretically, due to the separation of ownership and management, audit and financial reports are regarded as a communication bridge between managers and outside stakeholders. Nevertheless, the increasing weakening of the readability levels of financial and audit reports in recent years has had an adverse effect on their communication performance. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on audit report readability in the Tehran Stock Exchange. In this regard, the corporate governance mechanisms include corporate board’s independence, corporate board’s financial expertise, audit committee’s independence, CEO duality, board’s gender and institutional ownership. We also use Flesch and Fog readability indices as our readability measures. The statistical population of this research includes all listed companies on the Tehran Stock Exchange whose stocks are actively traded. A sample of 103 companies (721 firm-year observations) during the period 2011 to 2017 are chosen from this statistical population after lifting intended restrictions. Our findings suggest that corporate governance mechanisms significantly affect audit report readability.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the mediating role of senior managers' overconfidence in the extent to which their personality traits affect companies' financial distress. The statistical sample studied in this paper is 181 senior managers of companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange in 2018, using the following questionnaires: Neo five-factor model (McCrae and Costa, 1985), Rosenberg overconfidence (1965), and the designed checklist of financial distress and structural equation modeling method, PLS software were tested. The results showed that the personality dimensions of extraversion, openness to experience and agreeableness with indirect path coefficients of 0.23, 0.073 and 0.101, respectively, through the mediating variable of Overconfidence had a positive effect on firms' financial distress, but the characteristics of conscientious personality and neuroticism had no effect on financial distress through the mediating variable of overconfidence. The variable of overconfidence has a positive direct effect on financial distress and directly explains more than 45% of the changes of the variable of financial distress.

Internal audit is considered as one of the pillars of corporate governance in banks, corporations and organizations. The importance of internal audit in organizations across the world is undeniable. In current research, by using Delphi research methodology and a survey of 156 professional experts in internal auditing, it was tried to identify the internal audit quality criteria, in order to design a suitable model. For this end, based on the literature review and the research background, 29 criteria were identified which were classified in four sections including: a. Competence of internal auditors with eleven criteria; b. Independence of the internal audit department with eight criteria; c. Criteria related to the performance of internal audit work with seven criteria; and d. Other criteria with three criteria. Data were analyzed by utilizing R software with a confirmatory factor analysis model. The results of the study indicate that 19 criteria have been adopted, which provides a model for identification of internal audit quality criteria from the perspective of professional experts.

The stock price crash risk is always the inhibiting factor to attract liquidity on the capital market. Tehran stock exchange is at a lower level in terms of efficiency. Sudden changes of stock return have been observed. This will lead to liquidity transfer to non–productive markets including the Exchange of exchange and gold. The aim of this paper is to model the stock price crash risk in Tehran stock exchange. In this regard, the effect of factors such as cash management, financial distress, and disclosure quality and board composition were measured in the stock price crash risk. Also, the agency cost is considered as an intermediary variable. The statistical population of the companies listed in Tehran stock exchange is in the period from 1392 to 1396. To test the hypotheses, multivariate linear regression analysis and structural equation method are used. The results of the hypotheses tests show that, apart from the financial distress of other studied variables, the stock price crash risk is effective

This study, for the first time in Iran, uses neuroscience to generalize neural accounting issues in accounting. More specifically, it examines the impact of the hemispheres on the decision-making activities of management accountants due to the mediating role of activity risk assessment. The research method is descriptive-survey. The statistical population is management accountants working in the Tehran Stock Exchange in 2019. For this purpose, 300 questionnaires were designed and distributed among management accountants. Finally 154 items were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and partial least squares (PLS) approach. The results showed that the total cerebral hemispheres with 55.3 percent have a positive and significant effect on the various decisions of management accountants. The positive effect of the right hemisphere (77.9 percent) was greater than the left hemisphere (77.1 percent). The effect of information about activity risk, as a mediating variable, on the relationship between the cerebral hemispheres and the decision-making of management accountants is also positive and equal to 92.3 percent. The effect of the right hemisphere on risk (+36.3 percent) is less than the effect of the left hemisphere (+37.4 percent). Also, the effect of risk on different management accountants' decisions is positive and significant (33.7 percent). The left and right hemispheres of the brain together directly explain 8.8 percent of the changes in the decision-making activities of management accountants. Also, the right hemisphere of management accountants posit the greatest impact on marketing and human resource activities, and their left hemisphere has the greatest impact on budgetary and operational activities. These findings can have a considerable impact on the development of theoretical foundations as well as the performance of professional management accountants.