Student Perceptions of Earnings Management: The Effects of National Origin and Gender

Earnings management is the practice of makingdiscretionary accounting choices or timingoperating decisions to move reported earningstoward a desired goal. Prior research revealswide disagreement among both students andbusiness executives regarding the ethicalacceptability of earnings management. Thisstudy investigates whether gender and nationalorigin influence accounting students'perceptions of earnings management. Male andfemale accounting students from the U.S. andfive Asian countries evaluated thirteenvignettes describing earnings managementpractices. Very few differences were detectedbetween the responses of the male and femalestudents or between the students from the U.S.and the Asian countries, indicating that thepractice of earnings management was perceivedsimilarly across all the groups of studentsstudied.