Манипулирование прибылью: методы, последствия и выявление

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Earnings management, in accounting, is the act of intentionally influencing the process of financial reporting to obtain some private gain. Earnings management involves the alteration of financial reports to mislead stakeholders about the organization's underlying performance, or to "influence contractual outcomes that depend on reported accounting numbers." Earnings management has a negative effect on earnings quality, and may weaken the credibility of financial reporting. Furthermore, in a 1998 speech Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt called earnings management "widespread". Despite its pervasiveness, the complexity of accounting rules can make earnings management difficult for individual investors to detect. A 2020 report indicated that earnings management was the most common type of accounting fraud the SEC has taken action against under its whistleblower program. The SEC has criticized earnings management as having adverse consequences for financial reporting, and for masking "the true consequences of management's decisions".

Earnings management may be difficult for individual investors to detect due to the complexity of accounting rules, For example, research has shown that firms with large accruals and weak governance structures are more likely to be engaging in earnings management. More recent research suggested that linguistics based methods can detect financial manipulation, for example studies in 2012 found that whether a subsequent irregularity or deceptive restatement occurred is related to the linguistics used by top management in earnings conference calls.