Gender diversity and earnings management behaviours in an emerging market: a comparison between regression analysis and FSQCA

Abstract

The study explores the relationship between gender diversity board (GDB) and earnings management (EM) with state-ownership (SOE) and firm growth as moderating factors. Based on the data of 404 Vietnamese listed firms in 2015–2019, the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) method and further tests are employed to confirm the results. Furthermore, this research compares the results of multiple regression analysis (MRA) with a recently developed panel data fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis technique (fsQCA). The findings suggest that women on board (WOB) is negatively related to accrual based earnings management (AEM), while positive relationships are found with the real earnings management (REM) one. Besides, firms have high proportion of SOE reduce the monitoring role of WOB in detering EM. For companies that had the increase in revenue, WOB shows a positive and insignificant relationship to AEM as well as REM, respectively. The fsQCA results highlight the configuration of WOB, SOE, FG, and other board characteristic proxies that lead to the EM’s behavior. In short, the moderating role of SOE and revenue expansion is validated. This study adds to the scholarly literature on accounting and corporate governance (CG) by providing empirical evidence from the context of an emerging market, Vietnam.

Keywords

• female directors
• fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis
• accruals earnings management
• real earnings management
• state-ownership
• firm growth