Earnings Management in the Construction Waste Disposal Industry by Qualification Assessment Index for the Governmental Procurement Bidding-Focused on the Capability Assessment to Perform Services and Credit Ratings-
The purpose of this study is to analyse whether the capability assesment index to perform services as well as creditratings for the governmental procurement bidding influence earnings management behaviour using discretionary accrualsand real earnings management in the construction waste disposal industry. For this study, out of the 530 population(interimdisposal service companies for construction waste) across the country, the final sample of 144 companies is selected foran analysis period of six years, starting from 2008 to 2013. The modified Jones model (1995) is used to measure earningsmanagement and the Kothari et al. model (2005) reflecting return on total assets (ROA) is also applied to produce thediscretionary accruals. In addition, earnings management through real activities is measured by the model developed byRoychowdhury (2006) and the method developed by Cohen et al. (2008) is adopted to calculate the measurement ofintegration of real earnings management. Overall, our empirical results of the analysis show that the capability assessmentindex to perform services as well as credit ratings significantly influence earnings management behaviour in theconstruction waste disposal industry. First, the managers of companies having higher assessment index report increasedprofits through adjusting both discretionary accruals and real earings management. Second, the managers of speculativeenterprises which rank lower credit ratings use higher income-increasing discretionary accruals. These research findingsimply that the regulatory authorities should properly consider the earnings management behavior of the construction wastedisposal service industry in setting the qualification standards for the governmental procurement bidding. The usefulnessof this study results can be highlighted by alerting the industry managers that improper earnings management practicesnot only decrease the successful bidding chances of the companies involved but also deteriorate long-term firm valuesin the market.