JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING KNOWLEDGE
Year:2018 | Volume:9 | Issue:1 (32) |Papers Count:9

Sustainability of company is a general management concept that assures the continuity of activities of company and supports the long-term economic success of that. With regard to the importance of concept of sustainability in the recent century, this study aims to investigate the effects of disclosure of the extent of sustainability indicators on earnings quality for the companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) in the years 2011-2016. Since, at present, there is not any mandatory requirements and regulations about the disclosure of sustainability indicators in Iran, the disclosure of such indicators for the companies in TSE is at a low level. The required data for this study came from annual reports of board of directors, financial statements and websites of the sample companies from the TSE. Results from Panel data EGLS regression showed that disclosure of the extent of sustainability indicators, in general, has positive and significant effects on earnings quality. Also, findings showed that among the three dimensions of sustainability, the indicators relating to social and economic dimensions have negative and significant effects on earnings quality while that relating to environment dimension has positive and significant effects on earnings quality.

With regard to managers’ important roles in success of companies, the main purpose of this study is to examine the effects of managerial ability on the bankruptcy risk of the Iranian firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange, (TSE), and the mediating role of financial performance in that risk. In this study, the data came from a sample of 103 non-financing companies in the TSE from 2004 to 2015. Managerial ability of the companies was measured by the Demirjian’ s model (2012). Moreover, the rate of return on assets was applied as a proxy of financial performance, and Emerging Market Scoring model (Altman's Z˝ score) was used as a measure of bankruptcy risk. The results showed that managerial ability has negative impact on bankruptcy risk. And, financial performance mediates the effect of managerial ability on bankruptcy risk. In other words, managerial ability reduces the bankruptcy risk through improving financial performance. Therefore, it could be concluded that managerial ability is an important factor in the success of the companies in TSE.

This study examines the impacts of company diversification strategy on crash risk of stock price with emphasis on agency costs in the companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange, TSE. To proceed with research objectives, 120 companies in the TSE were selected for the period 2009-2014. To measure diversification strategy, Herfindahl index and entropy index were used, and to measure crash risk of stock price, negative conditional skewness of firm-specific monthly returns and down-to-up volatility measure were used. Panel data method was applied to the tests of hypotheses. The results showed that company's diversification strategy has positive and significant effects on crash risk of stock price. Also, after dividing the companies into two groups of companies with high and low agency costs, the impact of the company diversification strategy on crash risk of stock price were examined distinctly. The results showed that the positive impact of company's diversification strategy on crash risk of stock price in companies with high agency costs is intensive.

Detecting, evaluating and understanding fraud reports, called as misstated reports, has a long history in the accounting and financial literature. Shareholders choose managers as their agents in the company, so it is usual for them to be sensitive to the honesty of managers’ reports. Also auditors in their investigations are required to evaluate and measure the fraud risk in the methods implemented by the management of entity, and then, to estimate the parameters of audit tests, and their proposed auditing fees. This study has used non-financial approach to detecting and evaluating managers' fraud risk that is based on the analysis of the text of board of directors' report. In this method, the words of the board's reports were reviewed, and after some refinements, a model was presented for evaluating high fraud risk index in companies, using a certain type of regression model, called LASSO. This model is able to identify high fraud risk index in companies, correctly with precision of 89% to 91%.

With regard to the importance of financial statements and the role and value of information for decision makers and investors, it is required that corporate audit reports to be up to date, to rely on the information. The aim of this study is to investigate the factors affecting timely publication of audit reports. This required the impacts of the three factors of independent auditor, corporate governance and audit committee on audit reports delay to be tested empirically. The present study in terms of purpose is pragmatic and post-event in approach. The study period is from 2012 to 2016, and the selected sample consists of 115 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange. The research hypotheses were tested by multivariate regression model and EViews 9. Findings of the research indicated that audit firm size, auditors' opinion, reporting risk, number of audit report items and board size have significant and positive effects on audit reports delay. Also, focus of ownership and expertise of the members of audit committee have significant and negative effects on the delays in audit reports. According to the research findings, it is suggested that to increase the qualitative characteristics of information, attention should be paid to the factors affecting the delay of audit reports.

Efficiency is among the most important criteria that investors look for the factors effecting it, to find appropriate opportunities to invest. The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of myopic management on efficiency of companies with moderating role of corporate governance quality in a sample of 101 companies, listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange, in the years 2007-2014. The hypotheses testing were proceeded with the panel data multiple regression analysis. The results showed that myopic management has significant and negative effects on efficiency of companies, and quality of corporate governance has moderating role in this relationship. Myopic managers by reducing costs aiming at long-term benefits, decrease companies’ value, regarding that such behavior of managers could be reduced by promoting the level of watching on management.

The quality of auditing and financial reporting, which is taken as the reliance themes for many stakeholders and for making economic decisions, can be influenced by the type of auditor and auditing engagement, and by the period of auditing work. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of search period for successor auditor on initial audit fee and on the type of successor auditor, regarding the effects of resignation or dismissal of previous auditor measured as moderator variable. In this study, the statistical sample consists of 63 companies, selected from the Tehran Stock Exchange for the years 2011-2015 (5 years). The results showed that the search period for successor auditor has a significant and positive effect on initial audit fees, taking size of company as controlling variable. Also, the results verified a significant and negative relationship between search period and type of successor auditor. Although, the resignation or dismissal variable as moderator variable reduces the power of this negative relationship, lacks significant effects in that relationship. Furthermore, the results showed that type of successor auditor has a significant and negative relationship with initial audit fees, regarding size of company as controlling variable.