女性CFO真的更少进行盈余管理吗?

Does female CFO mean less earnings management?

利用沪深两市A股非金融类上市公司2009-2013年数据,考察了CFO性别对真实与应计盈余管理的影响。结果发现,就应计盈余管理而言,女性CFO公司与男性CFO公司没有显著差异;就真实盈余管理而言,女性CFO公司反而显著更高,具体而言,女性CFO公司更可能通过过量生产、降低裁决性费用来提高盈余。因此,女性CFO非但不会减少盈余管理,反而可能更多地进行盈余管理。不过,她们不会选择易于发现、法律与监管风险更高的应计盈余管理,而是倾向于选择不明显违反会计准则、难以与正常生产经营活动相区分的真实盈余管理。这表明,女性CFO具有比男性同行更强的管理防御动机,她们会通过盈余管理来传递其能力的信号、避免失去职位及相应的职务租,但在盈余管理方式的选择上,会注意规避法律与监管风险。

Many social psychology researches have demonstrated that women are more risk-averse than men,and that women have better moral reasoning and hate opportunistic behavior more than men.Gender differences in attitudes toward risks and moral development may lead to different decision behavior between female management and their male counterparts.It is widely accepted that female CFOs are more cautious and less aggressive than male CFOs on average.Several literatures have found that firms with female CFOs have less earnings management.However,real-activity based earnings management,another important means to meet earnings benchmarks,has been ignored in these researches.Compared to accrual-based earnings management,real earnings management has lower risk to draw auditor or regulator’s scrutiny.Risk-averse female CFOs may turn to real earnings management to meet earnings benchmarks without the increase of risk.It’s not clear whether female CFOs would engage in less real earnings manipulations.On the other hand,it still has not come to an agreement that female CFOs would decrease accrual earnings management.In summary,it’s still arguable about the effect of gender difference of CFO on earnings management.It’s the research question of this paper.Specifically,we will investigate the effect of CFO gender on both accrual-based earnings management and real activities-based earnings management to find whether female CFO is more conservative.Using the data of Chinese A share listed companies from 2009-2013,this paper investigates the association between CFO gender and real-based/accrual-based earnings management.The results show that:1)as to accrual-based earnings management,there’s no significant difference between female CFOs and male CFOs;2)as to real activities-based earnings management,however,there’s a significant positive association between female CFOs and comprehensive level of real earnings management activities,expenditure manipulation and product manipulation separately.In total,female CFOs do not mean less earnings management.On the contrary,female CFOs are more likely manipulate earnings by using real activities.Specifically,companies with female CFOs are more likely to excessively reduce discretionary expenses and engage in over-production with the aim to increase earnings.Such findings are contrary to the traditional belief that female CFOs are less likely to manipulate earnings than male CFOs.Why female CFOs are more involved with real earnings management?One possible explanation is that female CFOs have more strong incentives of managerial entrenchment.Incumbency rents will lead to managers’concern about keeping their position.Due to glass ceiling in promotion and the difficulties of reemployment,female CFOs would put more emphasis on career concerns.They have stronger incentives to signal their managerial abilities and keep their positions by manipulating earnings.Besides,self-selection hypothesis is also helpful to explain why female CFOs are more aggressive in real earnings management.But rational female CFOs would prefer less risky real earnings management than accrual-based earnings management.The preference of female CFO demonstrates that they wish to achieve a trade-off between regulatory risk and career concern.Above results do not reject the risk-averse hypothesis of female CFOs.This paper demonstrates the importance to integrate regulatory risk and career concern into a framework to understand the behavior of female CFOs.Too much attention on regulatory risk and lack of consideration on career concern is a limitation of existing literatures.This paper could deepen the understanding of association of gender difference and earnings quality.