董事會為公司治理之重要核心角色,其組成和特性的不同對於公司治理機制亦會有不同之影響。然而,過去大多數探討董監事之特性多以外部董監事席次比率、董監事規模、董監事成員持股比率等相關變數進行研究。少有針對董監事具有政治關聯之特性進行研究,因此本文將深入探討董監事成員具有政治關聯對盈餘品質的影響。另外,臺灣企業之經營型態多以家族企業為主,而家族企業獨特的特質可能使其公司治理環境與非家族企業有所不同。因此,本文另針對家族企業之董監事成員具有政治關聯對盈餘品質的影響作進一步之探討。 本研究以盈餘反應係數及盈餘平穩化作為盈餘品質的代理變數。實證結果發現當企業具有政治關聯的董監事成員人數愈多,政治關聯的程度愈大時,會產生較低的盈餘資訊內涵、操縱盈餘平穩化的幅度較大,揭露較差的盈餘品質。其次,獨立董監事具有政治關聯的影響力大於非獨立董監事具有政治關聯,顯示獨立董監事具有政治關聯會較不具獨立性,其監督能力較差。此外,本研究進一步發現,並非所有政治職務會對盈餘品質產生負向之影響,僅有董監事成員擔任政府官員或黨職工作者才會有此影響效果。
This study investigates the impacts of directors’ and supervisors’ political connections and family firms on earnings quality for publicly listed firms in Taiwan for the period from 1996 to 2013. By using income smoothing and earnings response coefficients to proxy for earnings quality, this study aims to examine the role of political connections and family firms on the quality of firms’ earnings reporting. The empirical results show that there is a significantly positive association between independent directors’ and supervisors’ political connections and income smoothing and a significantly negative association between independent directors’ and supervisors’ political connections and earnings response coefficients. However, there is no significant association between non-independent directors’ and supervisors’ political connections and earnings quality. Besides, there is no significant association between directors’ and supervisors’ political connections and earnings quality for family firms.