Board of Director Characteristics, Institutional Ownership, and Accounting Conservatism

Abstract

One of the determinants of conservatism is Board of Directors (BoD) characteristics. Several studies have examined the relationship between board characteristics and accounting conservatism. Nonetheless, previous empirical findings show heterogeneous and inconclusive results. This study aims to prove the role of board characteristics, namely board female, board expertise, board overconfidence, and board size in accounting conservatism. This study also examines institutional ownership as moderating variable. This research was conducted on 118 manufacturing companies for three periods, namely 2017-2019. The data analysis technique used is Partial Least Square. The test results prove that board female and board expertise increase accounting conservatism, while board overconfidence reduces conservatism. However, there is no relationship between board size and accounting conservatism. This study also indicates that institutional ownership strengthens the relationship between board females and board expertise to accounting conservatism. Contrary, institutional ownership fails as moderating variable between board size and accounting conservatism relationship. In testing the board overconfidence variable, the percentage of institutional ownership variable cannot be a moderating variable. Nevertheless, the interaction between board overconfidence and the number of institutional investors has a negative effect on accounting conservatism.

Keywords

• accounting conservatism
• board of directors
• institutional ownership