Earnings management in public companies: a bibliometric review

The purpose of this research is to examine the literature on earnings management in public companies. The study uses the Scopus database, with the PRISMA technique for sampling and VOSviewer for analyzing 1615 publications. This investigation exposed the enlargement of the network, the majority of the contributors, the intellectual basis of the structure, the most prevalent topic, the most productive journals, the prolific nations, and the research gap that needs to be further explored. The finding shows that the Scopus database began to include articles on earnings management in public companies’ studies in 1997. The terms “earnings management,” “corporate governance,” “accounting disclosures,” “board characteristics,” “auditors’ performance,” and “accounting fraud” have appeared frequently since 1997. “Earnings characteristics,” “institutional characteristics” and “corporate social responsibility”, are some of the recent themes and spotlights for the domain. Despite the recent emergence of these terms and the frequency of their usage in the current era, there are still some areas of research that have yet to be explored. The findings of this study provide insight into the implications of the past, present, and future, as well as highlight any areas of knowledge that have yet to be investigated, and so they become recommendations for researchers.