離職獨立董事特質與實質盈餘管理之關聯性

Abstract

本研究探討離職獨立董事之特質與公司實質盈餘管理之關聯性。過往研究聚焦於探討獨立董事特質對於其在職期間公司經營績效之關聯性，本研究則針對獨立董事之離職做為研究樣本，董事或財務主管辭任往往是因公司經營不善或出現財務問題，獨立董事之身分具監督中立性，其辭任更可以被視為觀察之重大警訊，樂陞(3662)事件後引發獨立董事離職潮，該現象顯示獨立董事對於風險敏感度之提升，也使得此一警訊。 本研究以2008至2017年上市櫃公司做為樣本，實證結果顯示，離職獨立董事年資越長或具備會計之背景，其對於公司盈餘管理幅度的忍受度越低，會選擇較早辭任，其結果顯示專業熟稔度與風險趨避程度具正向關聯，此外本研究更進一步將樣本依實質盈餘管理程度(RM)均分成四組，比較在管理幅度具差異的情形下，獨立董事特質的不同與其對於風險忍受度的關聯性，實證結果發現獨立董事的離職時間點是否早於公司財務主管與獨立董事年資呈顯著正相關，基於對公司經營較熟稔，故不待發現公司進行很大幅度盈餘操作時，始選擇提早離職。

This study examines the relationship between the extent of real management to the annual earnings announced immediately after the resignation of independent director(s) and the traits of these departing director(s). The research questions are in contrast with the prior related papers, which focus on the relationship between the characteristics of independent directors and the company's operating performance. This study, nevertheless, aims at the observations with independent director departures. The resignations of directors or financial directors may be because of their disappointments, concerns of legal liabilities, and disagreements in the direction of firm operation or information dissemination. Thus they may be regarded as a warning signal to the market. For instance, the XPEC Entertainment Event (3662) incident, which triggered the departure of independent directors, may reflect and increase the . the independent directors’ sensitivity to wrongdoing and/or misrepresentation risks. This study takes the 2008 to 2017 listed firm-year combinations in Taiwan as its sample. The empirical results show that for the events of independent director departures, when the resigning directors have greater years of prior experience or have the background in the accounting field, the lower is their tolerance to the company's real earnings management (RM). The results show that the professional familiarity positively correlates with the directors’ level of risk avoidance. The study further divides the sample into four groups according to the sign and magnitude of real earnings management, measuring for each partition group the relationship between the traits of these departing director(s) and their level of risk tolerance. The results regarding the group with the greatest RM measure support the notion that the departure timeliness, as measured by the difference in time between the resignation of independent directors versus that with respect to the company's financial officers, is significantly positively related to the seniority of the departing directors. It is perhaps that the more senior directors are more familiar with firm operations and thus outperform the other directors in identifying real earnings management.