IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/455.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The ethics of creative accounting: Some Spanish evidence

Author

Abstract

'Creative accounting' involves accountants in making accounting policy choices or manipulating transactions in such a way as to give the impression in the accounts that they prefer. While regarded as unethical by most observers, a defence of creative accounting can be based on the ability of the users of accounts to identify bias in accounting policy choices and make appropriate adjustments. In this paper we take the example of the Barcelona Football Club where the club management made three key accounting policy choices that presented a favourable position, and a supporters' club presented an alternative report choosing three alternative accounting policies that presented an unfavourable position. We presented each of these financial reports to one of two groups of Spanish bank loan offices, with supporting notes making the impact of the accounting policy choices clear. We found that the more favourable set of accounts was significantly more likely to attract a positive response to a loan request. This result undermines the defence for creative accounting, based on the ability of users to identify manipulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Oriol Amat & John Blake & Ester Oliveras, 2000. "The ethics of creative accounting: Some Spanish evidence," Economics Working Papers 455, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    • Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:455
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/455.pdf
    File Function: Whole Paper
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Keith Robson, 1994. "The discourse of inflation accounting," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(2), pages 195-214.
    2. Oriol Amat & John Blake & Jack Dowds, 1998. "The ethics of creative accounting," Economics Working Papers 349, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    3. Merchant, Kenneth A. & Rockness, Joanne, 1994. "The ethics of managing earnings: An empirical investigation," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 79-94.
    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. Csongor CSŐSZ & Partenie DUMBRAVA & Albert MÁRTON, 2012. "Creative accounting – tangible assets and amortization," Anale. Seria Stiinte Economice. Timisoara, Faculty of Economics, Tibiscus University in Timisoara, vol. 0, pages 767-774, May.
    2. Eenkhoorn, P. & Graafland, J.J., 2010. "Lying in Business : Insights from Hannah Arendt’s ‘Lying in Politics’," Discussion Paper 2010-75, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    3. J.J. Graafland & H. Smid, 2004. "Reputation, Corporate Social Responsibility and Market Regulation," Review of Business and Economic Literature, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Review of Business and Economic Literature, vol. 0(2), pages 271-308.
    4. Ester Oliveras & Oriol Amat, 2003. "Ethics and creative accounting: Some empirical evidence on accounting for intangibles in Spain," Economics Working Papers 732, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    5. Bo Kyeong Lee & So Young Sohn, 2017. "A Credit Scoring Model for SMEs Based on Accounting Ethics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-15, September.
    6. Carmen Vâlcu & Roxana Aurelia Mârț & Cristina Moroi, 2019. "The Determining Factors of Creative Accounting," Ovidius University Annals, Economic Sciences Series, Ovidius University of Constantza, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 0(2), pages 927-933, December.

    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. Ester Oliveras & Oriol Amat, 2003. "Ethics and creative accounting: Some empirical evidence on accounting for intangibles in Spain," Economics Working Papers 732, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    2. Tha’er Amjed Mahmoud Ababneh & Mehmet Aga, 2019. "The Impact of Sustainable Financial Data Governance, Political Connections, and Creative Accounting Practices on Organizational Outcomes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-16, October.
    3. Csongor CSŐSZ & Partenie DUMBRAVA & Albert MÁRTON, 2012. "Creative accounting – tangible assets and amortization," Anale. Seria Stiinte Economice. Timisoara, Faculty of Economics, Tibiscus University in Timisoara, vol. 0, pages 767-774, May.
    4. Balaciu Diana Elisabeta & Vladu Alina Beattrice, 2010. "Creative Accounting - Players And Their Gains And Loses," Annals of Faculty of Economics, University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1(2), pages 813-819, December.
    5. Alaa Mansour Zalata & Collins Ntim & Ahmed Aboud & Ernest Gyapong, 2019. "Female CEOs and Core Earnings Quality: New Evidence on the Ethics Versus Risk-Aversion Puzzle," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 515-534, December.
    6. Ines Gharbi & Mounira Hamed‐Sidhom & Khaled Hussainey & Janet Ganouati, 2021. "Religiosity and financial distress in U.S. firms," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 3902-3915, July.
    7. Jean-Louis Paré & Frédéric Demerens, 2011. "Détecter les manipulations financières en France : Le cas d'une PME cotée sur Alternext," Post-Print hal-00650559, HAL.
    8. Mehdi Nekhili & Fahim Javed & Haithem Nagati, 2022. "Audit Partner Gender, Leadership and Ethics: The Case of Earnings Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 177(2), pages 233-260, May.
    9. Oriol Amat & Catherine Gowthorpe, 2004. "Creative accounting: Nature, incidence and ethical issues," Economics Working Papers 749, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    10. Xi Fu & Xiaoxi Wu & Zhifang Zhang, 2021. "The Information Role of Earnings Conference Call Tone: Evidence from Stock Price Crash Risk," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 173(3), pages 643-660, October.
    11. Yi Si & Chongwu Xia, 2023. "The Effect of Human Capital on Stock Price Crash Risk," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(3), pages 589-609, October.
    12. William Shafer, 2015. "Ethical Climate, Social Responsibility, and Earnings Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 43-60, January.
    13. Desai, Naman & Jain, Shailendra Pratap & Jain, Shalini & Tripathy, Arindam, 2020. "The impact of implicit theories of personality malleability on opportunistic financial reporting," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 258-265.
    14. 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.
    15. Jin, Yige & Dong, Nanyan & Tian, Gaoliang & Zhang, Junrui, 2023. "Wisdom of the masses: Employee education and corporate risk taking," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    16. A. Greenfield & Carolyn Norman & Benson Wier, 2008. "The Effect of Ethical Orientation and Professional Commitment on Earnings Management Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 83(3), pages 419-434, December.
    17. Oriol Amat & John Blake & Jack Dowds, 1998. "The ethics of creative accounting," Economics Working Papers 349, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    18. James Gaa, 2009. "Corporate Governance and the Responsibility of the Board of Directors for Strategic Financial Reporting," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 90(2), pages 179-197, November.
    19. Andreas J. Steur & Mischa Seiter, 2021. "Properties of feedback mechanisms on digital platforms: an exploratory study," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 91(4), pages 479-526, May.
    20. Joseph Heath, 2007. "An Adversarial Ethic for Business: or When Sun-Tzu Met the Stakeholder," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 72(4), pages 359-374, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Creative accounting; ethics; Spain;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:upf:upfgen:455. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.upf.edu/ .

    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.