...Accounting scandals back in the early 2000, including that of Enron and WorldCom, led to the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). SOX aims to reduce corporate governance concern and ultimately seek to increase the credibility of the financial reporting. Agoglia, Doupnik, and Tsakumis (2011) looked at two aspects related to the strength of the financial reporting: the influence of standard precision and the role of audit committee. This article had and referred to with particularly focus on the circumstance in US with regards to their rules-based approach of accounting. The more precision based accounting standards in US is suppose to dampen the executives' ability to manipulate financial results as well as increase comparability across all firms. However, all the accounting scandals brought to the attention of the public has began to question whether the rules-based standards are serving their purpose better than the other option: principle-based. Originally, the view was principle-based accounting standards offers more room for flexibility and interpretation in the view of the executives and therefore more prone to manipulation because it allows for differences in judgment. This also implies of reduced comparability across firms because of the variations permitted. However, research from the article suggests otherwise. Results from the experiment showed that under the precise standard, or the rules-based standards, preparers are more likely to make aggressive financial...
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