獨立董監事專業背景與盈餘管理之關聯性

The relationship between professional knowledge of independent director and supervisor and earnings management

林冠醇(Guan-Chun Lin)

指導教授 ： 林嬋娟

國立臺灣大學/管理學院/會計學研究所/碩士(2009年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU.2009.10563

摘要

我國引進獨立董監事制度已超過六年，但公司治理機制與財務報導品質之相關文獻多著重檢視董事會規模、持股比例、及獨立性等特性，較少探討獨立董事專業性之文獻。
因此，本研究旨在探討獨立董事與獨立監察人之不同專業背景與盈餘管理之關聯性。本研究以2002年至2007年為樣本期間共3073筆觀察值，將專業背景區分成會計、財務、管理、與法律四種，實證結果顯示，只有具有會計或財務專業背景之獨立董事佔全體獨立董事比例愈高，愈可能減少管理階層盈餘管理行為，尤其當操縱目標為增加盈餘時，抑制效果較明顯；然而關於獨立監察人，實證結果則無法發現具有會計或財務專業背景之獨立監察人所佔比例，和盈餘管理行為有顯著負關聯。本研究推測可能原因為，我國監察人資訊取得上不若獨立董事具有優勢，對於董事會之經營決策無法適時地參與了解，且公司可能僅將獨立監察人視為專業地位崇高的「名譽」監察人，但未賦予其實際監督權力，因此即使具有會計或財務專業，亦可能有無力制止或不敢表達之情形，使得預期之降低盈餘管理功能無法有效發揮。

關鍵字

公司治理 ； 獨立董事 ； 獨立監察人 ； 盈餘管理

並列摘要

Taiwan has introduced the institution of independent directors and independent supervisors for over six years. However, most prior studies about the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on the quality of financial reports have been focusing on the characteristics such as board size, managerial shareholdings, and independence. There are few researches examining the expertise mechanism.
Thus, this thesis aims to investigate the relationship between professional knowledge of independent directors and supervisors and earnings management. This thesis use the sample period of 2002 through 2007 consisting of 3073 firm-year observations, and decompose the professional knowledge into four types, accounting, finance, supervisory and law. Results indicate the higher the ratio of the independent directors with accounting or finance expertise the lesser the earnings management behaviors, especially when the managers intend to manage earnings upwards. However, about the independent supervisors, results fail to identify significantly negative relation between the ratio of independent supervisors with accounting or finance expertise and earnings management. The potential explanations are supervisors in Taiwan are unable to get proper information and to timely get involved in board’s decision making process as independent directors. Moreover, enterprise may view independent supervisors as “reputable” experts, so they don’t have actual power to oversee managements and are unable or afraid to constrain behaviors that may have adverse impact on the quality of financial information. Thus, even if having accounting or finance professional knowledge, they are unable to exercise the role well in preventing earnings management.

並列關鍵字

corporate governance ； independent directors ； independent supervisors ； earnings management

參考文獻

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