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Conservatism and Equity Ownership of the Founding Family

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  • Shuping Chen
  • Xia Chen
  • Qiang Cheng

Abstract

We investigate the impact of founding family ownership on accounting conservatism. Family ownership is characterised by large, under-diversified equity stake and long investment horizon. These features give family owners both the incentives and the ability to implement conservative financial reporting to reduce legal liability and mitigate agency conflicts with other stakeholders. Since CEOs can have different incentives towards conservatism, we focus on ownership of non-CEO founding family members in our investigation. We find that conservatism increases with non-CEO family ownership, supporting our prediction. This relationship becomes insignificant in family firms with founders serving as CEOs, either due to founder CEOs' incentives to implement more conservative financial reporting or their power to thwart non-CEO family owners' demand for conservatism. Overall, our paper adds to the literature on the impact of founding family ownership on firms' financial reporting policy. Our findings are consistent with the recent evidence in the family-firm literature that founding families exhibit substantial incentives to reduce agency and litigation costs and to maximise firm value.

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  • Shuping Chen & Xia Chen & Qiang Cheng, 2014. "Conservatism and Equity Ownership of the Founding Family," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 403-430, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:23:y:2014:i:3:p:403-430
    DOI: 10.1080/09638180.2013.814978
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    2. Shankar Shaw, Tara & Raithatha, Mehul & Krishnan, Gopal V. & Cordeiro, James J., 2021. "Did mandatory CSR compliance impact accounting Conservatism? Evidence from the Indian Companies Act 2013," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3).
    3. Samer Khalil & Denise O’Shaughnessy & Ian Twardus, 2023. "SEC review of tax disclosures in family firms," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(2), pages 138-154, June.
    4. Johnathon Cziffra & Steve Fortin & Zvi Singer, 2023. "Differences in government accounting conservatism across jurisdictions, their determinants, and consequences: the case of Canada and the United States," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 1035-1073, June.
    5. Mohamed Khalil & Aydin Ozkanc & Yilmaz Yildiz, 2020. "Foreign institutional ownership and demand for accounting conservatism: evidence from an emerging market," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 1-27, July.
    6. Ma, Liangbo & Ma, Shiguang & Tian, Gary, 2016. "Family control, accounting misstatements, and market reactions to restatements: Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 1-27.
    7. Hideaki Sakawa & Naoki Watanabel, 2020. "Main bank relationship and accounting conservatism: evidence from Japan," Asian Business & Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 19(1), pages 62-85, February.
    8. Madah Marzuki, Marziana & Abdul Wahab, Effiezal Aswadi, 2016. "Institutional factors and conditional conservatism in Malaysia: Does international financial reporting standards convergence matter?," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 191-209.

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