Objective This study examines the impact of the fraud diamond dimensions, including fraud motivation, fraud opportunity, fraud rationalization, and managers' capability to commit fraud, on abnormal managerial tone in the annual board of directors' activity reports to the general assembly of shareholders. Based on agency theory, abnormal managerial tone may stem from managers' motives and their intent to manipulate market expectations. Additionally, behavioral theories suggest that abnormal managerial tone may arise from managers' individual and behavioral characteristics. Methods To measure fraud motivation, nine variables were used, including auditor opinion, employee growth, revenue growth, current ratio, working capital ratio, financial leverage, capital increase, earnings management, and tax evasion. CEO duality and weak internal controls were considered as proxies for fraud opportunity. Four variables, product market competition, transfer pricing, industry tax avoidance, and lack of political connections, were used as measures of fraud rationalization. Finally, six variables, CEO gender, tenure, ability, myopia, narcissism, and overconfidence, were considered as indicators of managerial capability to commit fraud. The study utilized data from 142 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2021, totaling 1,411 annual reports. The hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis with fixed year and industry effects. Managerial tone was measured using a specialized lexicon of board-related words based on Iranian board activity reports (Paleh et al., 2021), while abnormal tone was measured using Hung et al.'s (2014) model. Results The results of the model estimations revealed that auditor opinion, revenue growth, financial leverage, earnings management, and tax evasion, as proxies for managerial motivation, significantly influence abnormal tone. Also, the effect of weak internal control, as a measure of fraud opportunity, on abnormal tone was confirmed. In addition, the influence of CEO tenure, ability, narcissism, and overconfidence, as indicators of individual capability, on abnormal tone was validated, and the impact of product market competition, transfer pricing, industry tax avoidance, and lack of political connections, as measures of fraud rationalization, on abnormal tone was supported. Conclusion The findings suggest that fraud indicators, i.e., motivation, opportunity, rationalization, and individual capability, can explain abnormal managerial tone. Fraudulent managers tend to use an excessively positive tone in qualitative reports to conceal misconduct, leading to an abnormal tone. The key innovation of this study lies in examining the influence of all four dimensions of the fraud diamond on biased and abnormal managerial tone, thus expanding the literature on managerial fraud and tone management.

Projection and rationalization are among the major problems that people encounter often in daily relationships as common defense mechanisms. The extent of which this problem exists is an indication of certain unpleasant mentality. It is due to undesirable behaviors like denying responsibility, escaping reality, deception and immaculate presentation of oneself; the characteristics which usually take place unconsciously. Since the folklore is the presentation of traditions and social behavior and cultural values, therefore, in this article the attempt is made to trace the indications and instances of these concepts in Iranian folklore and in its subaltern cultures. The instances were found in the folk stories, proverbs and wise sayings. For this purpose first these psychological concepts were defined and explained, and then the instances extracted from the sources were presented. It is necessary to remember that at times certain instances carry both meanings of the projection and rationalization in them simultaneously.

Rationality is the factor which can limit the beneficial interventions and interference of the authorized politicians. However, although all different political systems are influenced by rationality, super rationalization makes the process of criminal policy making inefficient. Super rationalization is the result of extreme attention to some limited aspects of rationality while ignoring the other aspects of it by the politicians for interests of their own and their political parties. This is caused by the subjective prejudices of those politicians. In sum, the present article with regard to the theory of mixed rationality heavy of Snellen tries to study and investigate the position of rationality in the process of policy making of Iran. The aim is to discuss the arise of super rationalization. The results suggest that “ super rationality” has, at least in some cases, made Iran's criminal policy system effective by maximizing the intervention of political leaders in the policy-making process and the application of super political, moral, and religious rationality. In a way, rational criminal policy has changed the nature of irrational criminal policy. Accordingly, the application of “ mixed rationality” through reviewing the traditional elements of policy-making and strengthening the presence of professional elites and civil society in it, can be a solution to the problem of super rationality in the Iranian policy-making system.

The crime of computer fraud is one of the most important computer crimes. This crime like the crime of classic fraud is one of the crimes against property. Any kind of fraud committed by computer is not called computer fraud, because the criminals use the computer as a tool for committing both classic fraud and computer fraud. The computer fraud and classic fraud are different in actus reus. Such a difference has caused that the acts ruling on classic fraud are not applicable for computer fraud.Considering the international aspect of computer crimes, some international regional and global organizations have presented definitions for the crime of computer fraud and have recommended to their members to consider them for criminalization. In Iran, computer fraud in the field of electronic interchanges has criminalized, but not in the other fields. Lack of paying attention to technical issues related to computer fraud by Iranian legislators has caused some technical problems in article 67 of electronic commercial code. The articles of draft of computer crimes act have some technical problems too and the provider of this draft could not criminalize computer fraud correctly either.Considering the international aspect of computer fraud, the Iranian legislator should use the international experiences in criminalizing crime.

The present study aims to understand how the process of rationalization had taken place in the Iran of the constitutional era. In the political philosophy, one of the most important conditions for a country to access to a rational society is the rationalization of its government and politics or the process of rationalization of government in three concepts. Substantial rationalization, voluntary rationalization, and bureaucratic and legal rationalization. The government in Iran only realized the importance of rationalization when the constitutional movement was formed. A movement that led to a break in the Iranian history and created a new chapter for it. Essentially, the three components of modern political economy, legal bureaucracy, and modern law have brought about a rational transformation of government in Iran. It is with this development that the government first emerged in a liberal and voluntary form and then took on bureaucratic, legal and substantive forms. What this study seeks to understand is how this rationalization took place despite the despotic government and rule of the social and economic relationships of pre-capitalist Iran. The method of this research is descriptive-analytical and it aims to answer the question of how the modernization of government in Iran started and continued.

The design of the audit program so that it can be used to adequately respond the fraud risk is one of the most important activities that auditors do in their investigations. Paying attention to the most important dimensions and risk factors of fraud can help auditors in this process. In this regard, in this research, the importance of the dimensions and risk factors of fraud in the adjustment of the audit program has been investigated. For this purpose, the fraud Pentagon model has been used. This model includes five dimensions of pressure/motivation, opportunity, rationalization, capability and arrogance. In order to conduct this research, four fraud risk factors were selected by expert opinion for each of the five fraud dimensions. A questionnaire was used to collect data. The statistical population of the study is Iranian association of certified public accountants in year 2018. After distributing and collecting questionnaires, the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) method was used to rank the dimensions and risk factors of fraud. The results show that opportunity dimension and fraud risk factors including significant portions of managers’ compensation being contingent upon operating results, financial position, or cash flow, ineffective information, accounting and internal controls systems, restrictions on the auditors’ investigation, level of experience and overconfidence have the highest degree of importance in modifying the audit program.