Diversity of internal governance and financial reporting quality: Post-GFC of an emerging market

Abstract

We examine whether wide-ranging board diversity reduce earnings management from the emerging market of Malaysia. We contribute to the prior literature in several ways. First, while previous literature are mainly focusing on the developing economy, our study is the first that examine the relationship between all-inclusive set of diverse board characteristics and earnings management from the emerging economy. Second, we concentrate to the post-GFC period, where we intentionally avoid the GFC, a situation where managerial opportunistic behaviour to engage in earnings management is more prevalent due to economic reason. Third, we cover the potential complementary or substitutive effects of board diversity characteristics on earnings management. Using 1400 listed firms in emerging market of Malaysia over the period of 2009-2015, in contrast to our prediction, our findings demonstrated that the relationship between board diversity characteristics and earnings management in the Malaysia is mixed. We therefore conclude that the diversity mechanism that work well in the developing countries might not necessarily compatible to the emerging economy such as Malaysia.