Family firms and earnings management in Brazil: an analysis under the perspective of the take a bath and of the income smoothing

Abstract

Given the characteristics of family businesses, these are different from not-familiar companies, especially regarding its centralizing power and conservative, long-term strategic plans for the purpose of perpetuation of its business, while safeguarding the capital of the family group. For these and other reasons, family businesses have drawn the attention of researchers, especially in identifying the level of relationship between family ownership and the results of these companies. Opportunely, the purpose of this article theoretical-empirical, quantitative, documentary and descriptive, is to identify whether family-properties companies differ from other companies as not-familiar average production discretionary accruals, and as the coefficient of variation of profits on the change in sales; and identify the level of respect of family ownership with the practice of take a bath (production of negative discretionary accruals) and smoothing (smoothing results) among public companies Brazilian listed on the BM&FBOVESPA® in the period 2000-2010 . The results initially showed that family businesses tend to produce more negative discretionary accruals, as well as coefficients of variation of the ratio of profits on sales markedly more negative, causing them to differentiate themselves from other non-family businesses. Results obtained through logistic regression (logit and probit models), shows that family ownership is positively related to both the practice of take a bath as with smoothing, with the latter being a more statistically significant relationship.