IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/arjpps/v26y2013i1p35-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The value of executive director share ownership and discretionary accruals

Author

Listed:
  • Arifur Khan
  • Paul Mather

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between the value of executive director share ownership and discretionary accruals. Design/methodology/approach - This study uses a dataset of 1,173 firm‐year observations drawn from 188 Australian listed companies for the period 2000‐2006. The analysis is based on multivariate regression analysis and ordinary least square models were used to investigate the relation between the value of managerial ownership and discretionary accruals. The issue of potential endogeneity is addressed by using a simultaneous equation system. Findings - A negative relation is found between value of managerial share ownership and discretionary accruals at lower levels of value of ownership, which is consistent with the theorised incentive alignment that as the managers commit more resources to their firms, stakeholders impose less contractual constraints specified in terms of accounting numbers and managers make lower accrual adjustments. After a certain level of value of ownership is attained, a positive relations seen, consistent with increased discretionary accrual adjustments associated with stakeholders anticipating managerial entrenchment. Also, it is found that these results are driven by firms with income increasing, as opposed to income decreasing, discretionary accruals. Practical implications - Shares and options are forming an increasing proportion of executive remuneration that continues to be the subject of much debate amongst regulators and in the media. Showing that the value of share ownership may be an effective internal governance mechanism to help align incentives adds to the debate and has policy implications. Originality/value - The paper's primary contribution is finding that the value (as opposed to proportion) of share ownership, typically representing a sizeable proportion of managers' undiversified wealth, is a potentially direct driver of theorised incentive alignment and entrenchment effects associated with share ownership.

Suggested Citation

  • Arifur Khan & Paul Mather, 2013. "The value of executive director share ownership and discretionary accruals," Accounting Research Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 26(1), pages 35-55, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:arjpps:v:26:y:2013:i:1:p:35-55
    DOI: 10.1108/ARJ-02-2012-0011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ARJ-02-2012-0011/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ARJ-02-2012-0011/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/ARJ-02-2012-0011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mohammed Mehadi Masud Mazumder, 2017. "Re-examination of the Non-linear Relationship Between Management Ownership and Earnings Management: Evidence from Japan," Indian Journal of Corporate Governance, , vol. 10(1), pages 1-23, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:arjpps:v:26:y:2013:i:1:p:35-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.