CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND CREATIVE ACCOUNTING: TWO CONCEPTS STRONGLY CONNECTED? SOME INTERSTING INSIGHTS HIGHLIGHTED BY CONSTRUCTING THE INTERNAL HISTORY OF A LITERATURE

Corporate governance is concerned with the relationships between a business’smanagement and its board of directors, shareholders and lenders and its other stakeholders such asemployees, customers, suppliers, and the community in which activates. The connection betweenthis topic and creative accounting was debated in the literature since the latter occurrence isrelated to the weakness of the first. Our study offers interesting insights into this strong connectionby examining the relevant ideas developed previously in the literature with the scope ofunderstanding, reinterpreting and rediscovering from interesting points of view this association inour search for responsibility in the economic environment. By conducting this study we wanted toreinforce the role of literature analyst as an interpreter who contributes meaning to the presentstate of the art.corporate governance, creative accounting, Papineau`s hierarchy

SOME INSIGHTS REGARDING CREATIVE ACCOUNTING IN ROMANIAN ACCOUNTING ENVIRONMENT - REGULATORS, FINANCIAL AUDITORS AND PROFESSIONAL BODIES OPINION

This empirical study reports the results of a survey designed to explore the existence and magnitude of creative accounting practices in the Romanian accounting environment using as a reference point the opinion of some of the top representative accounting professionals like: financial auditors, regulators and professional bodies representatives of the Chamber of Financial Auditors of Romania and also representative of the Body of Expert and Licensed Accountants of Romania. \\r\\nSince the existence of creative accounting practices are connected in accounting with issues of vulnerability and in some cases panic getting to know its magnitude can be regarded of higher importance. In this respect we were interested to see if our respondents can document its existence and magnitude based on their experience. In order to achieve this goal our methodology employed neutral and direct interviews based on closed questions questionnaire. \\r\\nThe results of our empirical study documented that the credibility of accounting profession in the Romanian accounting environment is not affected by items like creative accounting since all our respondents asserted that is not facile to employ creative accounting schemes in the practice of accounting. One particular question was concerned about the ease of detection of creative accounting practices. In this respect we interrogated our respondents and all had similar opinions that in order to detect those practice skilled professionals are needed and more than that the desire to engage in this demarche since it is not specified particularly in the law.\\r\\nWhen it comes to creative accounting schemes that our respondents could identify in their day to day work they shared similar views: items like profit overstatement and profit undervaluation, income tax and leasing can be included frequently in those schemes. On the other hand practices of creative accounting that include goodwill, provisions and developments costs are not found in a significant proportion in the Romanian economic environment. \\r\\n \\r\\ncreative accounting, creative accounting practices, credibility, existence, magnitude

DETECTION OF EARNINGS MANAGEMENT - A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK BASED ON ACCRUALS APPROACH RESEARCH DESIGNS

The scope of this theoretical research is to outline recommendations for improving the complex process of detection of accounts manipulation. In this respect we turned to the previous literature and assessed empirical studies in order to be able to develop a robust model for understand the process of detection for accounts manipulation and further to ease the path of detection by proposing as we stated above a theoretical framework in this respect. Since there is a constant conjecture between cause and effect we are able to assert that two direction of research can be identified and both can explain further the roots for limiting earnings management since its detection can be much easier approached: the event that can represent the root for accounts manipulation and the normal trend considered for a certain company related to the accruals level and economic trend. In the end if we know the cause we can interpret the event and combat its appearance. But when this kind of research appears, another question springs. Should we fight earnings management practices? Clikeman (2003:78) sensed that by using those practices companies are walking on a very slippery slope where minor accounting gimmicks become more and more aggressive until they create material misstatements in the financial statements. So, the recourse to such practices creates a stake that is not negligible. The users of financial statements are misled when making decisions based on manipulated accounting numbers. To a certain extent, the existence of earnings management distorts the usefulness of financial statements, and in this respect the process of detecting it can be regarded both as being important and challenging. Our proposal is not related to a technical process of detecting earnings management as typical empirical studies found in the literature and more than that we open a new stream of research based on understanding the forms of manifestation for accounts manipulation, getting to know the antecedents, the features, the possible interactions among antecedents and current features. Based on the recommendations found in the literature the eradication of manipulative processes is next to impossible but the limitation can be a reality. In this respect the researchers recommend controlling the conditions and motives that increase the likelihood of its presence and also developing stronger tools to detection.earnings management, accruals

CREATIVE ACCOUNTING - PLAYERS AND THEIR GAINS AND LOSES

The aim of this paper is to bring into attention an interesting game of accounts manipulation and its playes. Their expectations represent the genesis point of manipulative behaviour and by understanding their actions and gains and losses we may create a link to undestanding the process of creative accounting thinking. The divergent interests of these users (e.g.managers, fiscal authorities and banks) derive from their position and power, and give rise to doubt regarding the objectivity of accountancy information provided by annual financial reports.creative accounting,manipulation accounts, information users

A BRIEF REVIEW OF CREATIVE ACCOUNTING LITERATURE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES IN PRACTICE

Our research has as main objective a short review of the aspects approached at theEuropean level regarding the role that creative accounting plays in the life of an enterprise. Inorder to achieve our goal, we have analysed approximately 40 academic articles indexed ininternational database, such as Science Direct, Emerald and ProQuest. We have used alongitudinal classification of the selected articles, studied between the years 1999 and 2009; wehave tried, also, a classification of these papers according to the most frequent debating themes. In the end of our research, we have formulated our own conclusion,, that there is nounanimously or unifying accepted theory at the international or European level regarding what is,what the creative accounting represents or which are its basic principles.creative accounting, financial scandals, financial reporting

CASH-FLOW REPORTING BETWEEN POTENTIAL CREATIVE ACCOUNTING TECHNIQUES AND HEDGING OPPORTUNITIES CASE STUDY ROMANIA

We have studied the cash flow reporting issues in Romania, trying to establish if there isan interest in using creative accounting techniques in order to manipulate cash flow reporting.Another issue of our research is focused on the possibility of using hedging opportunities by financialmanagers of Romanian companies, in order to at least partially protect future cash-flow from externalfluctuating factors.In order to achieve our goals, we have issued a questionnaire, submitted to authorize auditors fromRomania (208 audit companies and 267 individual auditors).Our study lead us to conclude that creative accounting techniques related to cash flow are only partlyknown and used by the Romanian companies. On the other hand, hedging techniques were found to bevery little known and used by Romanian managers. In this respect, the few instruments used are relatedto bank and insurance products like factoring, receivables insurance, financial instruments based oninterest and foreign exchange rates.cash flow, creative accounting, hedging opportunities

JONES, DECHOW AND KASZNIK MODELS SIGNIFICANCE IN THE ROMANIAN ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT

This study intends to be a first step into an attempt of measuring the earningsmanagement using an econometric model valid for the Romanian specificities by trying to establishthe level of significance of three acknowledged econometric models: Jones (1991), Dechow et al.(1995) and Kasznik (1999) on Romanian economic environment.Given the above mentioned premises, the study was conducted using the Romanian listedcompanies (active on the Bucharest Stock Exchange) selected by a main criteria: discrepancybetween reported cash flow and reported net income. Our analyses lead us to the conclusionrelated to the above mentioned issues that Jones model was found to be significant for Romanianeconomic environment in terms of applicability unlike Dechow and Kasznik models, thus it may befurther developed and applied to an extended database.earnings management, manipulation, cash flow

SOCIAL WELFARE AND TAXATION EFFECTS ON INSURANCE. AN INTERNATIONAL EMPIRICAL STUDY

This paper analyzes the influence of the level of economic development as well as the level of taxation on insurance activity. To this purpose we reviewed the national and international literature and collected data on international level (for both year 2insurance, premiums, taxation, economic development

UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY REVIEW OF THE HIGHLY CITED PAPERS

Our multidisciplinary review paper aims to explore the research paradigms of unethical behavior from different academic perspectives. By doing this, our paper contributes to a better understanding of unethical behavior by drawing knowledge from alternative understandings of such behavior. More specifically, our multidisciplinary inquiry aims to summarize the main findings documented by scholars from different disciplines that conducted independent research on the topic using unique perspectives and ideas associated with the field. As such, in order to gain a better understanding of how unethical behavior is examined through a range of different disciplines and areas of research we assessed the highly cited papers found at the intersection of various categories and research areas such as management, business economics, and psychology, ethics, engineering, and environmental sciences and ecology, public environmental occupational health. Having the goal to offer the most representative research on the topic, we based our review on the highly cited papers examining unethical behavior from the Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science (WoS), the world`s leading scientific citation search and analytical information platform. The results show that the highly cited papers analyzed cluster around two major research themes as antecedents and factors increasing/enabling unethical behavior (e.g. propensity of moral disengagement, psychological entitlement, self-serving justifications, job insecurity, air pollution, polluted social contexts, creativity, favorable attitudes of upper-class toward greed, etc.) and factors deterring or limiting it (e.g. religion, ethical leadership). Given our multidisciplinary review, our study helps provide alternative understandings and important insights on the research of unethical behavior to serve for novel investigations in both practice and theory

FAIR VALUE MEASUREMENT IN AGRICULTURE AND THE POTENTIAL TO MISLEAD

Applying fair value measurement to tangible and intangible assets in agriculture cannot be risk free. Twofoldreasons can be brought into attention for the above statement: fair value estimation and the specific of agriculturefield. The purpose of this discussion paper is to underline potential creative accounting demarches that can appear inthis context. The paper concludes based on the discussions approached in the literature. Further avenues of researchare discussed