기업 내 여성 임직원이 실물 이익조정에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

[Purpose] The purpose of this study is to empirically examine whether the characteristics of female employees and executives, such as neutrality, avoidance of opportunistic decision－making, and supervising management with higher moral standards, can contribute to reduce real earnings management and to improve the usefulness of accounting information. [Methodology] This study expands the existing researches by extending the sample periods from 2013 to 2019, and by including all companies listed in the Korea Exchange(KRX). It used real earnings management proxies suggested in Roychowdhury(2006)’s study and run the regression equations with a sample of 12,227 firm－year observations. [Findings] The four real earnings management proxies, except for the abnormal cash flow from operations, showed the significantly negative relationships with female employees and executives proxies. The interaction terms of female employees and female executives also showed a statistically and significantly negative relationship with real earnings management proxies. [Implications] This can be an evidence that female employees and executives in company do avoid opportunistic earnings reports and reduce real earnings management, therefore they contribute to enhance the quality of reported accounting information. This study is also meaningful because it defines gender diversity including not only female executives but also female employees, and because it uses real earnings management not discretionary accruals, which is a more appropriate measure of earnings management to verify the roles of female employees and executives at the all practice and executive levels.