Impacts of Board Characteristics and Ownership Structure on Discretionary Accruals: Evidence from Thai Listed Companies

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze the impact of board characteristics and ownership structure on discretionary accruals (or unconditional accounting conservatism). Board characteristics comprised board size, board independence, board meeting and board leadership and ownership structure comprised highest percentage of shareholders and percentage of institutional investors. The dependent variable was discretionary accruals. The secondary data were collected from listed companies on the Stock Exchange of Thailand during 2016-2018 excluding finance companies and restructuring companies. There were 702 data with 234 companies for data analysis in the study. The relationship between independent variables and dependent variables were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The research results showed that there were significant impacts of board size, board independence and board leadership on discretionary accruals (or unconditional accounting conservatism). Board size and board leadership provided significant positive impacts on discretionary accruals; whereas board independence showed a negative impact on discretionary accruals.