CFO characteristics and opportunistic accounting choice in public sector organizations

Pierre Donatella and Torbjörn Tagesson ()
Additional contact information
Pierre Donatella: University of Gothenburg
Torbjörn Tagesson: Linköping University

Journal of Management & Governance, 2021, vol. 25, issue 2, No 9, 509-534

Abstract: Abstract Two different theoretical foundations in the literature relate to the quality of financial reporting in public sector organizations: one theoretical foundation is based on economic theory, and the other is based on institutional theory. In addition to examining the traditional factors derived from these theories, this paper focuses on the role of the chief financial officer (CFO), in order to broaden the theoretical perspective and add explanatory power with regards to the empirical testing of opportunistic accounting choice in public sector organizations. Similar to Anessi-Pessina and Sicilia (J Public Adm Res Theory, 30:465–484, 2019), this paper uses upper echelons theory (Hambrick and Mason in Acad Manage Rev, 9(2):193–206, 1984; Hambrick in Acad Manage Rev, 32(2):334–343, 2007) to conceptually link CFO characteristics with opportunistic accounting choice. The accounting issue addressed herein is related to a statement issued by the standard-setting body within the Swedish municipal sector. Our results suggest that opportunistic accounting choice decreases with CFO tenure and prior CFO experience in municipalities.

Keywords: CFO; compliance; Earnings management; Accounting choice; Public sector; Upper echelons theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10997-020-09521-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jmgtgv:v:25:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10997-020-09521-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/10997/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10997-020-09521-1

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Management & Governance is currently edited by Lino Cinquini

More articles in Journal of Management & Governance from Springer, Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().