Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
1-2026
Abstract
This paper examines the association between chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) prosocial tendency and their firms’ likelihood of accounting manipulation. We measure CEOs’ prosocial tendency based on their involvement with charitable organizations. We find that prosocial CEOs are less likely to engage in accounting manipulation, as proxied by material non-reliance restatements and SEC or DOJ enforcement actions. The effect is more pronounced when CEOs are involved with charities that directly aim to improve the welfare of others and when they face stronger incentives to misreport. These results continue to hold in analyses of changes in CEOs’ prosocial tendency around turnover events. Taken together, our findings suggest that CEOs’ prosocial tendency, a fundamental personal trait, plays a significant role in shaping the quality of accounting information.
Keywords
prosocial behavior, prosocial tendency, accounting manipulation, accounting information quality
Discipline
Accounting | Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics | Corporate Finance
Research Areas
Corporate Reporting and Disclosure
Publication
Contemporary Accounting Research
First Page
1
Last Page
30
ISSN
0823-9150
Identifier
10.1111/1911-3846.70049
Publisher
Wiley
Embargo Period
12-2-2025
Citation
FENG, Mei; GE, Weili; LING, Zhejia; and LOH, Wei Ting.
Prosocial CEOs and accounting manipulation. (2026). Contemporary Accounting Research. 1-30.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soa_research/2099
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.70049
Included in
Accounting Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Corporate Finance Commons