International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume VI, Issue IX, September 2022|ISSN 2454-6186
Haruna Usman, Tosin Olushola, Amina S. Mohammed
Business Education Department, School of Vocational and Technical Education, Aminu Saleh College of Education, Nigeria
Abstract:- This study aims to examine the impact of audit committee characteristics on earning management of listed consumer goods companies in Nigeria. The characteristics of the audit committee consist of audit committee independence, audit committee member diversity, audit committee member size and audit committee member meetings. Earnings management is perceived to be spreading across companies and industries; it distorts and portrays an incorrect picture of a firm’s financial performance. Audit committees are a popular corporate governance tool to improve the credibility of financial statements. This study uses a secondary source of data from listed consumer goods companies in the Nigerian stock Exchange from 2011-2020. The dependent variable was generated using two steps regression in order to determine the discretionary accrual of the sample Firms (Earnings Management). Multiple regression was employed to run the data of the study using STATA 16. The findings of the study reveal that audit committee independence has no effect on earnings management; the diversity of the audit committee has no effect on earnings management. The number of meetings of the audit committee members has no effect on earnings management. The size of audit committee has a significant positive effect on earnings management. It recommends that number of audit committee members be increased to include large number drawn base on the expertise which may be in a better position to discover and question management on dubious accounting practices.
Key words: Audit Committee, Earnings Management, Independence, Size, Meeting
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years researchers have dwelled much on the effectiveness of audit committee characteristics in deterring earnings management in companies both locally and international, this cannot be divorced from rampart reported cases of financial scandals involving chief executive officers of corporations leading to corporate failure. Expectedly, auditors and audit committees are popular corporate governance tool to improve the credibility of financial statements in an organization for healthy financial statement that represent the true state of affairs of the organizations through monitoring mechanisms installed for the entire process of financial reporting and disclosure (ThankGod and Onukogu, 2018, Salawu et al, 2017).