Institutional Imprints and Corporate Misconduct: Unravelling the Interplay of Economic History and Firm Choices on Earnings Manipulation in an Emerging Economy
研究印度制造业企业发现，封闭经济时期的保护主义政策留下的制度印记会促使企业在经济自由化后更多地进行调增利润的盈余管理，而国际化与内部创新能削弱这种影响。
This study investigates the impact of firms’ legacy institutional imprints on its engagement in corporate misconduct. We discover that a closed economic regime’s protectionist policies inscribe imprints in the form of opaque organizational routines and cause incumbent firms to develop competitive limitations. Utilizing the theoretical principles of the organizational imprinting theory, this research attests to the endurance of corruptive routines and argues that the degree of closed economy imprints increases firms’ engagement in income-increasing earnings management in the post-liberalization period. Furthermore, we find that the impact of imprints is weakened by firms’ choices on international exposure and internal innovation. By utilizing the historical data on Indian economic policies from 1956 to 1991 and analyzing a sample of 18,432 firm-year observations for 2,396 listed Indian manufacturing firms from 1997 to 2007, we find support for our hypotheses.