Corporate social responsibility, real activities earnings management, and corporate governance: evidence from Korea

We examine whether a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities are associated with real activities earnings management (RAEM) based on stakeholder perspective. We also investigate whether corporate governance (CG) moderates the relationship between CSR and RAEM. Using a sample of 1432 firm-year observations of Korean-listed firms during 2005–2010, we find that socially responsible firms are significantly and negatively associated with RAEM. More importantly, we find that this relationship is moderated by CG as measured by a composite CG index. These results remain robust after we perform various sensitivity analyses. This study primarily contributes to the literature on CSR, CG, and RAEM by providing evidence for the moderating role of CG on the relationship between CSR and RAEM.