停業單位分類變動盈餘管理之實證研究

Earnings Management Using Classification Shifting: A Study of the Association between Core Earnings and Discontinued Operations

董瀚文(HAN-WEN TUNG)

指導教授 ： 張慧珊

中原大學/商學院/會計研究所/碩士(2014年)

https://doi.org/10.6840/cycu201400344

摘要

過去相當多文獻探討盈餘管理相關議題，其大致將盈餘管理工具分為應計項目盈餘管理及實質盈餘管理，有關於第三種盈餘管理工具─分類變動盈餘管理，較少文獻探討。利用停業單位進行分類變動盈餘管理，可增加繼續營業部門及核心盈餘表現，提高管理當局進行分類變動盈餘管理之動機。報表使用者常利用盈餘門檻進行決策，提供管理階層誘因操弄盈餘表現，故本研究亦探討管理當局是否利用停業單位進行分類變動盈餘管理以達到或超越三項盈餘門檻：零盈餘(避免負盈餘)、前期盈餘(避免盈餘減少)或分析師預測(避免盈餘不符合預測)。而近年來我國注重公司治理相關議題，亦有許多文獻探討公司治理議題，但鮮少文獻探討公司治理與分類變動盈餘管理之關聯性，故本研究加以公司治理角度，探究公司治理機制是否能有效抑制此種盈餘管理行為，以補充文獻上的不足。
本研究以1997年至2012年台灣上市、上櫃公司為研究樣本，探討管理當局是否利用停業單位進行分類變動盈餘管理，以及利用停業單位進行分類變動盈餘管理以達到或超越三項盈餘門檻，另亦進一步研究公司治理是否能抑制利用停業單位進行分類變動盈餘管理之行為。
實證結果發現我國資本市場中，的確存在利用停業單位進行分類變動盈餘管理之行為，該行為將導致下期未預期核心盈餘減少，存在迴轉現象。管理當局利用停業單位進行分類變動盈餘管理之行為為連續性行為，而非僅單獨一期進行分類變動盈餘管理；且管理當局會利用該盈餘管理行為以達到或超越前期盈餘，即避免盈餘減少。本研究公司治理指標顯示，董事長非內部化、董事會規模與較低的董事持股比率能有效抑制利用停業單位進行分類變動盈餘管理之行為，顯示公司治理能有效抑制利用停業單位進行分類變動盈餘管理之行為。

關鍵字

盈餘管理 ； 停業單位 ； 分類變動

並列摘要

Most theses related to earning management over the past years have categorized the earning management tools into accruals management and real economic activities. Issues related to the third earnings management tool, Classification Shifting, are much less discussed. The use of discontinued operations as the management tool for shifting operating loss allows the increase of income of continuing operations and the core earnings performance. Therefore, discontinued operations also help to add motivation to the managers’ use of classification shifting. Users of financial statements often use earnings benchmarks for decision-making, which creates incentives to make the managers manipulate the earnings performance. Thus, we also investigate whether the managers engage in the use of discontinued operations in classification shifting earnings management for core-earning increase to meet or beat the three earning benchmarks: (1) zero earnings(to avoid losses); (2) prior-period earnings(to avoid earnings decreases); (3)analysts’ earnings forecast(to satisfy market’s expectations). In addition, we include corporate governance issues to discuss whether corporate governance mechanisms can effectively inhibit classification shifting behavior to complement the lack of related literatures.
The sample companies are selected from the listed and OTC companies in Taiwan during the period of 1997-2012. The purpose of our study is to explore whether managers use discontinued operations to perform classification shifting, and to meet or beat the three earnings benchmarks. The possibility of using corporate governance mechanisms to effectively inhibit the classification shifting behavior is also discussed.
The empirical results indicate that firms shift operating losses to discontinued operations to increase core earnings. The behavior of classification shifting has caused an unexpected decrease of core earnings in the next finical period. In addition, classification shifting is not only used as a single period earnings management tool but also regularly used in continuum period. Our findings also indicate that managers use classification shifting to increase current income of continuing operations in order to achieve or surpass the amount of previous earnings. Finally, it is found that corporate governance can effectively inhibit the use of discontinued operations as classification shifting for earnings management.

並列關鍵字

classification shifting. ； discontinued operations ； earnings management

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