Personal determinants affecting the perfection of the quality of earnings : a local investigation

Abstract

This dissertation aims to identify the personal determinants that may help m shaping up an individual's ethical values and in turn affect his/her perception of earnings management. Earnings management is defined and its two forms of manipulations: accounting manipulations and operating manipulations are described. Earnings management is one of the most important practical ethical issues faced by accountants and accounting students as it directly affects the quality of earnings. Previous research has shown that the operating type of manipulation is perceived to be more ethical than its accounting counterpart. A questionnaire was designed and structured into two main parts dealing with the personal determinants and the vignettes consisting of earnings management situations used by Bruns and Merchant (1990), respectively. The target population consisted of B.Accountancy (Hons.) final-year students and CPAs. The results indicate that the local attitude to the earnings management situations varies considerably among the respondents. Consequently, the statistical tests conducted reveal that certain personal determinants may significantly affect the perception of these earnings management situations and remedial measures are suggested to prevent resorting to earnings management practices.