Earnings management research based on the stakeholder perspective — From the empirical analysis of listed companies in China

Earnings management has always been one of the main means to polish performance reports of listed companies. As most interests' stakeholders' understanding of the company is from the financial report, the earnings management motivation from managers will exist for them to affect decision-making of stakeholders in listed companies. This paper, considering the participation of stakeholders, and the relationship between earnings management and senior managers, executive officers, supervisors, shareholders, creditors, suppliers, distributors, employees, government and community; found out that executives, independent directors positively related to the earnings management, suppliers, shareholders, directors and creditors is negatively related to the earnings management through the empirical analysis. But supervisors and distributors is not significantly related with earnings management. According to the phenomenon of earnings management, it also divided stakeholders' into three types as stakeholders' incentive, constraint and comprehensive. And accordingly, it also put forward different earnings management advice from the perspective of three types.