In this paper we investigate the impact of board characteristics on opportunistic earnings management in the context of a large emerging economy, India. While the role of company boards in earnings management has been examined in developed markets setting, particularly the US and UK, understanding their effectiveness in emerging markets like India is particularly important due to differences that exist in the structure of business organizations across these markets.
Using a sample of 500 large Indian firms, we analyze the effect of board independence
on earnings management as has been the focus of most existing studies, and extend the existing literature by including characteristics of directors that proxy for the “quality” of both inside and outside directors that are likely to impinge on the effectiveness of boards in curbing earnings manipulation.
Our results indicate that it is not board independence per se, but rather board
quality that is important for earnings management. Our results show that diligent boards are associated with lower earnings manipulation, while boards that have large number of multiple directors exhibit higher earnings management. With respect to inside directors,
our results
indicate that CEO-duality and presence of controlling shareholders on the board increases earnings management. We also find that domestic institutional owners, one of our key control variables, mitigate earnings management and acts as a compensating control mechanism to the presence of controlling shareholders on corporate boards.