The International Journal of Accounting

This paper comprehensively reviews the current body of international accounting literature regarding advisory/monitoring committees and corporate outcomes. Specifically, it synthesizes, appraises, and extends current knowledge on the (a) theoretical (i.e., economic, accounting/corporate governance, sociological and socio-psychological) perspectives and (b) empirical evidence of the observable and less visible attributes at both the individual and committee levels and their link with a wide range (financial/non-financial) of corporate outcomes. Using the systematic literature review method, 304 articles from 59 journals in the fields of accounting and finance that were published between January 1992 and December 2018 are reviewed. The main findings are as follows. First and theoretically, agency theory is the most dominant applied theory/studies with no application of theory at all (descriptive), while the application of integrated theoretical frameworks is lacking in the reviewed articles. Secondly, the existing empirical evidence focusses excessively on (a) monitoring instead of advisory committees and (b) observable rather than less visible committee attributes. Thirdly, scarcity of cross-country studies along with methodological limitations relating to measurement inconsistencies, insufficiency of variables, and dominance of quantitative studies, among others, are identified. Finally, promising future research avenues are outlined.

This paper conducts a meta-analysis of 182 published archival accounting and auditing studies on the corporate governance determinants of financial restatements. We aim to provide a focused and systematic examination of various internal and external corporate governance factors that may predict financial restatements. We do so by aggregating results statistically across individual studies and correcting statistical artifacts, thereby we provide findings that are much more precise than those of narrative reviews. We categorize the chosen governance variables into (a) audit firm and audit engagement characteristics; (b) gender, board attributes, and audit committee attributes; (c) CEO related attributes; (d) ownership structure variables; and (e) external corporate governance variables, and thus we generate a total of 37 separate corporate governance variables. Our results reveal that the governance mechanisms of Big N auditor choice, types, and timeliness of audit opinions and board independence are significantly and negatively associated with the occurrence of financial restatements. However, economic bonding between auditors and their clients, insider ownership, and firm complexity all increase the likelihood of restatements significantly. We hope that our findings will make a meaningful contribution to the literature on financial restatements and corporate governance by providing insights for regulators on the governance mechanisms that may require further scrutiny in combating the occurrence of financial restatements.

Corporate governance (CG) reformists typically presume better-governed companies are more transparent to investors. We focus on CG and transparency in Japan, where CG has been an ongoing issue. Using local ratings of Japanese companies’ CG and data on corporate disclosures and their associated stock returns, we do find better-governed Japanese companies have made more frequent and timelier disclosures, and their share prices have reflected value-relevant information earlier. While these results hold for good news, they do not hold for bad. Consequently, governance guidance in Japan may not have resulted in both timelier and more balanced release of newsworthy information.

This paper draws on the articles in the Forum on Corporate Governance to discuss how corporate governance and accounting research complement each other well in explaining how companies are governed as well as properly managed from an accounting point of view. We put special attention to the cross-national differences in both corporate governance systems and accounting practice and how that affect multiple organizational outcomes ranging from financial performance to corporate social performance and reporting quality.

Using standard proxies for accounting quality, with a focus on earnings persistence and earnings management, we examine how the association between firm-level informativeness and accounting quality varies according to the quality of the country-level information environment. Our sample comprises over 15,000 publicly traded firms from 21 countries included in the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Emerging Markets Index, between the years 2000 and 2016. Using novel proxies that aggregate several firm- or country-level characteristics associated with lower information asymmetry or higher-quality information environment, we find that in emerging markets with weaker information environments, the positive association between firm-level informativeness and accounting quality is more pronounced, suggesting that greater firm-level informativeness may partially compensate for weaker country-level institutions. Consistent with the substitution effect, we also document that the positive association between firm-level informativeness and stock market performance is greater in emerging countries with weaker information environments.