사외이사 집단의 전문성과 이익조정과의 관련성: 금융업종을 중심으로

This study examines the relationship between the expertise of independent directors and managers’ earnings management in the banking industry of which the qualification of independent directors is under debate. We test whether the independent directors who have worked as government officials and who do not have accounting, financial, and company experiences affect differently from the independent directors who have worked as professors at universities, certified tax accountant, certified public accountants, and researchers in research institutes, in controlling earnings management proxied by the performance-matched discretionary accruals. From 2009 to 2013, we selected 137 firm-years which have audit committees and of which the financial data are available via the databases. We fail to find the relationship between the independence or activity of the board or audit committee and managers’ earnings management. However, we find that the specialty in the audit committee negatively and statistically significantly affects earnings management. We also find that this relationship holds only when the professors are classified in the specialty group. We interpret our findings as the evidence that the audit committee composed of not only outside directors but with outside directors with specialties is the key to control earnings management. For further study, our findings suggest the necessity to consider specialties issue when outside director characteristics are in question. We believe that our study provides regulators a useful guideline about professors’ specialty when enacting Principles of Corporate Governance.