In this article, we work to advance this debate by drawing on the attention-based view
(ABV) of the firm (Ocasio, 1997) suggesting that, particularly in countries with a weak
legal enforcement, the higher effectiveness of corporate boards on earnings management
might also be ‘‘attention based related,’’ short-lived, showing its peak in the adoption year.
We assume that boards have selectively re-allocated their attention, due to the contextual
and organizational relevance of IFRS implementation, to monitoring accounting issues
during ‘‘one of the largest regulatory experiments in financial reporting ever undertaken’’
(Christensen, Lee, & Walker, 2007, p. 342), and to comply with market authorities specific
recommendations.1