The Impact of Corporate Governance and Real Earnings Management on Financial Statement Fraud in Malaysia

This study examines the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and financial statement fraud in Malaysia. This study also investigates the likelihood of Malaysian financial statement fraud firms’ involvement in real earnings management. Although a number of firms submitted fraudulent financial statement each year to deceive financial statement users in decision making, limited studies have been undertaken on financial statement fraud in emerging countries. This study will fill the research gap by examining the relationships between financial statement fraud, corporate governance and real earnings management. In the end, this study will make a significant contribution for regulators to make policies and analysts to identify early warning signals with regard to fraudulent financial reporting practices in Malaysia. Univariate and multiple regression models will be employed to test the hypothesized relation between firms convicted in financial statement fraud and corporate governance practices. This study will incorporate ethnic attribute on the board and audit committee. This study will also investigate changes towards corporate governance practice after fraud detection. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, no research has investigated pre and post corporate governance practices in related to financial statement fraud at the same time. Abnormal real earnings management will be used as the proxy for earnings management. Prior literatures have focused on accounting accruals to proxy earnings management. Nevertheless, past literatures documented that it is more favourable for managers to manipulate monetary values that involve with the timing of actual business transactions. It is also posited that real earnings management occurs before manipulation of accruals. As a result, the decision to use real earnings management in identifying early warning signal of financial statement fraud is appropriate. Potential findings of this study are the effective corporate governance mechanisms able to reduce fraudulent financial reporting. Furthermore, earnings quality is expected to decline towards the conviction of financial statement fraud.