Research On The Influence Of Top Management Team Characteristics On Earnings Management

As one of the important research topics in the field of modern corporate finance and corporate governance,earnings management has been widely concerned by scholars at home and abroad.Earnings management will affect the quality of accounting information of enterprises,and top management team as the main body of earnings management,its value and cognitive style will be affected by the characteristics of top management team.The implementation of equity incentive in listed companies is considered to effectively alleviate the conflicts of interest between top management team and shareholders,and reduce the company’s earnings management.Therefore,this paper mainly studies the influence of top management team characteristics on earnings management^[1],and explores the moderating role of equity incentive between top management team characteristics and earnings management^[2].This paper mainly uses the combination of literature research method,theoretical analysis and empirical research.Firstly,this paper takes the theory of upper echelons theory,principal-agent theory,information asymmetry theory and incentive theory as the theoretical basis.Taking the influence of top management team characteristics on earnings management as the main line,the characteristics of top management team are divided into three indicators:age,education level and tenure.On the basis of theoretical analysis,the research hypothesis of main effect and the research hypothesis of moderating effect of equity incentive are put forward.Secondly,taking the data of China’s gem listed companies from 2013 to 2017 as the research sample,and a multiple regression model was constructed for empirical analysis.Finally,summarize the conclusions of this paper,put forward management inspiration,and make further prospects for future research.The research results show that:first,the age of top management team is negatively correlated with earnings management.That is,the older the average age of top management team,the less likely it is to prefer earnings management.Second,the education level of top management team is negatively correlated with earnings management.That is,the higher the average education level of top management team,the more they can understand the harm behind earnings management,the less likely it is to earnings management.Third,the tenure of top management is negatively correlated with earnings management,that is,the longer the average top management team is employed,the less likely it is to earnings management.Fourth,equity incentive plays a not significant negative moderating role between the age of top management team and earnings management,and a significant positive moderating role between the education level of top management team and earnings management.This research enriches the relevant research on the characteristics of top management team and earnings management,and expands the research results on equity incentive,characteristics of top management team and earnings management.It has certain enlightenment and reference value for optimizing the construction of top management team,reducing corporate earnings management behavior,optimizing corporate governance structure and promoting corporate sustainable development.