The present study contends that the increased effectiveness of corporate boards in constraining
earnings management around International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
introduction might be ‘‘transitory’’ and fade away over time. Drawing on the attentionbased
view (ABV) of the firm, we argue that the higher effectiveness of corporate boards
might have been driven by a temporary higher level of attention, which independent directors
(INDs) and audit committees (ACs) allocated to accounting issues at the time of transition
to IFRS. Our empirical results highlight that corporate board’s effectiveness reaches
its peak around the adoption time, showing an ‘‘inverted-U’’ path. This study contributes to
the current debate on the extent to which additional contextual factors might prevail on
accounting standard regulation—per se—in improving earnings quality. We further suggest
that boards’ effectiveness in monitoring the corporate financial accounting process is contextually
dependent.