Labor Market Outcomes of Restatements for Corporate Accountants

Abstract

Our study examines the impact of nonfraud financial restatements on the careers of corporate accountants. Using LinkedIn data, we identify a sample of accountants working at 201 firms that restated their financial statements between 2004 and 2014. We find that compared with human resource employees within the same company or corporate accountants in matched control firms, accountants in restatement firms, particularly senior staff, have a higher rate of departure and a lower probability of moving to a higher-ranked position outside the company after a restatement is announced. Using a longer job search period as a measure of being forced to leave, we find that the higher departure rate for senior accountants is because of being forced out rather than leaving voluntarily. The higher departure rates occur only for accountants working at firms with more severe restatements. In a separate sample of firms that restate financial statements because of clerical errors, we do not find higher departure rates for accountants after the restatement is revealed. Our results suggest that senior accountants in restatement firms experience negative outcomes in the labor market. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting. Funding: J. (X.) Jiang acknowledges research support from the Eli Broad College of Business. M. Shen acknowledges financial support from the NUS Start-up Grant [Grant A-0003914-00-00] and the Singapore MOE Tier-1 Grant [Grant A-8000098-00-00]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.00430 .

中文摘要

本研究考察了非欺诈性财务重述对公司会计人员职业生涯的影响。利用领英数据，我们识别了2004年至2014年间进行财务重述的201家公司的会计人员样本。研究发现，与同一公司的人力资源员工或匹配控制公司的会计人员相比，重述公司的会计人员（尤其是高级职员）在重述公告后离职率更高，且跳槽至公司外部更高职位的机会更低。通过将更长的求职期作为被迫离职的衡量指标，我们发现高级会计人员的高离职率是由于被迫离职而非自愿离职。这种高离职率仅出现在重述问题更严重的公司中。在另一组因笔误而重述财务报表的公司样本中，我们未发现重述披露后会计人员离职率上升。结果表明，重述公司的高级会计人员在劳动力市场上经历了负面结果。本文由Suraj Srinivasan（会计学）接受。资助：J. (X.) Jiang感谢Eli Broad商学院的科研支持；M. Shen感谢新加坡国立大学启动基金（Grant A-0003914-00-00）和新加坡教育部一级基金（Grant A-8000098-00-00）的资助。补充材料：在线附录和数据文件可在https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.00430获取。