IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v174y2021i2d10.1007_s10551-020-04609-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Financial Executives Do Bad Things: The Effects of the Slippery Slope and Tone at the Top on Misreporting Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Anna M. Rose

    (University of Waikato)

  • Jacob M. Rose

    (University of Waikato
    Monash University)

  • Ikseon Suh

    (University of Nevada Las Vegas)

  • Jay Thibodeau

    (Bentley University)

  • Kristina Linke

    (University of Groningen)

  • Carolyn Strand Norman

    (Virginia Commonwealth University)

Abstract

This paper employs theory of normal organizational wrongdoing and investigates the joint effects of management tone and the slippery slope on financial reporting misbehavior. In Study 1, we investigate assumptions about the effects of sliding down the slippery slope and tone at the top on financial executives’ decisions to misreport earnings. Results of Study 1 indicate that executives are willing to engage in misreporting behavior when there is a positive tone set by the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) (kind attitude toward employees and non-aggressive attitude about earnings), regardless of the presence or absence of a slippery slope. A negative tone set by the CFO does not facilitate the transition from minor indiscretions to financial misreporting. In Study 2, we find that auditors evaluating executives’ decisions under the same conditions as those in Study 1 do not react to the slippery slope condition, but auditors assess higher risks of fraud when the CFO sets a negative tone. Overall, our results indicate that many assumptions about the slippery slope and tone at the top should be questioned. We provide evidence that pro-organizational behaviors and incrementalism yield new insights into the causes of ethical failures, financial misreporting behavior, and failures of corporate governance mechanisms.

Suggested Citation

  • Anna M. Rose & Jacob M. Rose & Ikseon Suh & Jay Thibodeau & Kristina Linke & Carolyn Strand Norman, 2021. "Why Financial Executives Do Bad Things: The Effects of the Slippery Slope and Tone at the Top on Misreporting Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 174(2), pages 291-309, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:174:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-020-04609-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-020-04609-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-020-04609-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-020-04609-y?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sweeney, John T. & Suh, Ik Seon & Dalton, Kenneth C. & Meljem, Sylvia, 2017. "Are workpaper reviews preparer-specific?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 560-577.
    2. Eskenazi, Philip I. & Hartmann, Frank G.H. & Rietdijk, Wim J.R., 2016. "Why controllers compromise on their fiduciary duties: EEG evidence on the role of the human mirror neuron system," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 41-50.
    3. Jeffrey Cohen & Ganesh Krishnamoorthy & Arnold M. Wright, 2002. "Corporate Governance and the Audit Process," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 573-594, December.
    4. Elizabeth E. Umphress & John B. Bingham, 2011. "When Employees Do Bad Things for Good Reasons: Examining Unethical Pro-Organizational Behaviors," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(3), pages 621-640, June.
    5. Hopper, Trevor M., 1980. "Role conflicts of management accountants and their position within organisation structures," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 401-411, October.
    6. Schrand, Catherine M. & Zechman, Sarah L.C., 2012. "Executive overconfidence and the slippery slope to financial misreporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 311-329.
    7. Dolly Chugh & Max Bazerman, 2007. "Bounded awareness: what you fail to see can hurt you," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 6(1), pages 1-18, June.
    8. Barbara Arel & Cathy Beaudoin & Anna Cianci, 2012. "The Impact of Ethical Leadership, the Internal Audit Function, and Moral Intensity on a Financial Reporting Decision," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 351-366, September.
    9. Linda Babcock & George Loewenstein, 1997. "Explaining Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 109-126, Winter.
    10. Timothy J. Brown, 2014. "Advantageous Comparison and Rationalization of Earnings Management," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 849-876, September.
    11. Marianne Bertrand & Antoinette Schoar, 2003. "Managing with Style: The Effect of Managers on Firm Policies," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(4), pages 1169-1208.
    12. Clinton Free & Pamela R. Murphy, 2015. "The Ties that Bind: The Decision to Co†Offend in Fraud," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(1), pages 18-54, March.
    13. Arne Nygaard & Harald Biong & Ragnhild Silkoset & Roland E. Kidwell, 2017. "Leading by Example: Values-Based Strategy to Instill Ethical Conduct," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 145(1), pages 133-139, September.
    14. (Xuefeng) Jiang, John & Petroni, Kathy R. & Yanyan Wang, Isabel, 2010. "CFOs and CEOs: Who have the most influence on earnings management?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 513-526, June.
    15. Fisher, Robert J, 1993. "Social Desirability Bias and the Validity of Indirect Questioning," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 20(2), pages 303-315, September.
    16. Ikseon Suh & John T. Sweeney & Kristina Linke & Joseph M. Wall, 2020. "Boiling the Frog Slowly: The Immersion of C-Suite Financial Executives into Fraud," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 645-673, March.
    17. Lorenzo Patelli & Matteo Pedrini, 2015. "Is Tone at the Top Associated with Financial Reporting Aggressiveness?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 3-19, January.
    18. Weili GE & Dawn Matsumoto & Jenny Li Zhang, 2011. "Do CFOs Have Style? An Empirical Investigation of the Effect of Individual CFOs on Accounting Practices," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(4), pages 1141-1179, December.
    19. Vikas Anand & M. Tina Dacin & Pamela Murphy, 2015. "The Continued Need for Diversity in Fraud Research," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(4), pages 751-755, November.
    20. Abernethy, Margaret A. & Brownell, Peter, 1997. "Management control systems in research and development organizations: The role of accounting, behavior and personnel controls," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 22(3-4), pages 233-248.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Muel Kaptein, 2023. "A Paradox of Ethics: Why People in Good Organizations do Bad Things," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 297-316, April.
    2. Paul, Samit & Sharma, Prateek, 2023. "Does earnings management affect linguistic features of MD&A disclosures?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    3. Gianni Onesti & Riccardo Palumbo, 2023. "Tone at the Top for Sustainable Corporate Governance to Prevent Fraud," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-16, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ikseon Suh & John T. Sweeney & Kristina Linke & Joseph M. Wall, 2020. "Boiling the Frog Slowly: The Immersion of C-Suite Financial Executives into Fraud," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 645-673, March.
    2. Plöckinger, Martin & Aschauer, Ewald & Hiebl, Martin R.W. & Rohatschek, Roman, 2016. "The influence of individual executives on corporate financial reporting: A review and outlook from the perspective of upper echelons theory," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 55-75.
    3. Florackis, Chris & Sainani, Sushil, 2021. "Can CFOs resist undue pressure from CEOs to manage earnings?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    4. W. Robert Knechel & Natalia Mintchik, 2022. "Do Personal Beliefs and Values Affect an Individual’s “Fraud Tolerance”? Evidence from the World Values Survey," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 177(2), pages 463-489, May.
    5. Yuping Jia & Laurence Van Lent & Yachang Zeng, 2014. "Masculinity, Testosterone, and Financial Misreporting," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(5), pages 1195-1246, December.
    6. Justin J. Hopkins & Edward L. Maydew & Mohan Venkatachalam, 2015. "Corporate General Counsel and Financial Reporting Quality," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 129-145, January.
    7. Francesco Capalbo & Alex Frino & Ming Ying Lim & Vito Mollica & Riccardo Palumbo, 2018. "The Impact of CEO Narcissism on Earnings Management," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 54(2), pages 210-226, June.
    8. Jingyu Gao & Adi Masli & Ikseon Suh & Jingchang Xu, 2021. "The Influence of a Family Business Climate and CEO–CFO Relationship Quality on Misreporting Conduct," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 99-122, June.
    9. Bharati, Rakesh & Doellman, Thomas & Fu, Xudong, 2016. "CEO confidence and stock returns," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 89-110.
    10. Bill Francis & Iftekhar Hasan & Jong Chool Park & Qiang Wu, 2015. "Gender Differences in Financial Reporting Decision Making: Evidence from Accounting Conservatism," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 1285-1318, September.
    11. Ling L. Harris & Scott B. Jackson & Joel Owens & Nicholas Seybert, 2022. "Recruiting Dark Personalities for Earnings Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 193-218, June.
    12. L. Georg-Schaffner & E. Prinz, 2022. "Corporate management boards’ information security orientation: an analysis of cybersecurity incidents in DAX 30 companies," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 26(4), pages 1375-1408, December.
    13. Maas, Victor S. & Yin, Huaxiang, 2022. "Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers’ behavior affects employee collusion," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    14. Frerich Buchholz & Kerstin Lopatta & Karen Maas, 2020. "The Deliberate Engagement of Narcissistic CEOs in Earnings Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 167(4), pages 663-686, December.
    15. Wooseok Choi & Sam Han & Sung Hwan Jung & Tony Kang, 2015. "CEO's Operating Ability and the Association between Accruals and Future Cash Flows," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(5-6), pages 619-634, June.
    16. Adair Morse & Wei Wang & Serena Wu, 2016. "Executive Lawyers: Gatekeepers or Strategic Officers?," NBER Working Papers 22597, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Kim, Mindy (Hyo Jung), 2021. "Effects of managerial overconfidence and ability on going-concern decisions and auditor turnover," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    18. Lu Qiao & Emmanuel Adegbite & Tam Huy Nguyen, 2024. "CFO overconfidence and conditional accounting conservatism," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 1-37, January.
    19. Pham, Mia Hang, 2020. "In law we trust: Lawyer CEOs and stock liquidity," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    20. Martin Mutschmann & Tim Hasso & Matthias Pelster, 2022. "Dark Triad Managerial Personality and Financial Reporting Manipulation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(3), pages 763-788, December.

    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:kap:jbuset:v:174:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-020-04609-y. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.