| چکیده انگلیسی مقاله |
Objective This study examines the impact of the fraud diamond dimensions, including fraud motivation, fraud opportunity, fraud rationalization, and managers' capability to commit fraud, on abnormal managerial tone in the annual board of directors' activity reports to the general assembly of shareholders. Based on agency theory, abnormal managerial tone may stem from managers' motives and their intent to manipulate market expectations. Additionally, behavioral theories suggest that abnormal managerial tone may arise from managers' individual and behavioral characteristics. Methods To measure fraud motivation, nine variables were used, including auditor opinion, employee growth, revenue growth, current ratio, working capital ratio, financial leverage, capital increase, earnings management, and tax evasion. CEO duality and weak internal controls were considered as proxies for fraud opportunity. Four variables, product market competition, transfer pricing, industry tax avoidance, and lack of political connections, were used as measures of fraud rationalization. Finally, six variables, CEO gender, tenure, ability, myopia, narcissism, and overconfidence, were considered as indicators of managerial capability to commit fraud. The study utilized data from 142 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2021, totaling 1,411 annual reports. The hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis with fixed year and industry effects. Managerial tone was measured using a specialized lexicon of board-related words based on Iranian board activity reports (Paleh et al., 2021), while abnormal tone was measured using Hung et al.'s (2014) model. Results The results of the model estimations revealed that auditor opinion, revenue growth, financial leverage, earnings management, and tax evasion, as proxies for managerial motivation, significantly influence abnormal tone. Also, the effect of weak internal control, as a measure of fraud opportunity, on abnormal tone was confirmed. In addition, the influence of CEO tenure, ability, narcissism, and overconfidence, as indicators of individual capability, on abnormal tone was validated, and the impact of product market competition, transfer pricing, industry tax avoidance, and lack of political connections, as measures of fraud rationalization, on abnormal tone was supported. Conclusion The findings suggest that fraud indicators, i.e., motivation, opportunity, rationalization, and individual capability, can explain abnormal managerial tone. Fraudulent managers tend to use an excessively positive tone in qualitative reports to conceal misconduct, leading to an abnormal tone. The key innovation of this study lies in examining the influence of all four dimensions of the fraud diamond on biased and abnormal managerial tone, thus expanding the literature on managerial fraud and tone management. |