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The main purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of the company's position in the life cycle on real earning management, emphasizing the moderating role of family ownership. The method of research is applied in terms of purpose with a causal nature which takes a post-experimental method. Data source is the information included in the financial statements of the Tehran Stock Exchange listed companies. The time frame of research includes eight consecutive years from 2014 to 2021. The statistical sample embraces 141 TSE-listed companies. The final analysis of data was done in Eviews and SPSS software. Firstly, the entire sample is divided into two groups of companies with family ownership and without family ownership. Then, the effect of the life cycle on earning management variables is tested using multivariate regression analysis in both samples, independently. Finally, the effect coefficients obtained in two samples are compared with each other by two-sample t-test (paired comparison). The obtained results show that there is a significant relationship between the life cycle stages of companies and earning management through sales management, production cost management and investment management. Also, the earnings management strategies used in the life cycle of family-owned firms are different from others. Based on the findings of this research, companies without family ownership use production cost management and sales management in the stages of introduction and maturity, respectively, and in the final stages of life (decline), they put earning management using investment management into practice. While family-owned companies do not use profit management in the early stages (introduction and growth), and in the maturity stages, they manage real earnings by using sales management.

This paper Presents a model for the effective budgeting in a Holding Company in Iran and answers to this question: “which aspects and proxies can we provide in order to improve the effectiveness of budgeting in that holding?” So, these steps had been followed: first, the current procedures of the budgeting and their effectiveness had been reviewed using documents review and 19 semi-structured interviews with operational managers, board of directors and CEOs of mentioned companies. Second, their expectation about the budgeting system had been analyzed. We used judgement and snowball sampling methods for choosing interviewees and the thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. For achieving the trustworthiness of data and research findings, we emphasized on the members control and experts’ feedback. Also, we tried to provide a full description of the research process. We identified 875 primary codes from the data gathered by interviews, and 219 codes remined after removing duplicates. Followed by this, we identified 50 basic themes and 21 organizer themes, which classified into 5 inclusive themes, as follows: prerequisites and requirements, factors of budgeting effectiveness, factors of budget approval effectiveness, factors of deviation assessment and budget correction effectiveness, and factors of performance evaluation effectiveness.

As audit committees are expected to assess the design and implementation of internal controls, the challenge of supervising financial reporting controls has become more prominent. This article examines how audit committee members oversee internal controls for financial reporting. The article uses agency theory and institutional theory to explain the role of audit committees as corporate governance monitors. Since there is a gap in the literature on how audit committees perform their supervision of internal controls, this research aims to shed light on the process of audit committee oversight of internal control over financial reporting (ICFR) and seeks to investigate the factors that influence the variation in audit committee internal control over financial reporting oversight.

The study collected the required data from 97 audit committee members of companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. These members serve on the largest audit committee within their respective companies, determined by annual income. A questionnaire was administered to audit committee members to assess the extent of their engagement in overseeing different facets of internal control over financial reporting. The evaluation was based on the 17 principles outlined in the 2013 Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) Internal Control Framework. The primary questions of the questionnaire addressed 13 out of the 17 principles of the COSO internal control framework, encompassing all five components. Specifically, these questions delved into three principles within the control environment, four principles in risk assessment, two principles in control activities, as well as principles related to information and communication, and monitoring activities. The collected data was analyzed using EViews software.

The statistical analysis of the gathered data revealed that audit committee members devote the most time to monitoring activities, control activities, and risk assessment areas respectively, and the least time to control environment areas. Moreover, the regression analysis of the study showed that the industry of the companies, specifically financial services, or insurance, is positively related to the extent of overall audit committee oversight of internal control over financial reporting. Other characteristics such as age and internal audit experience do not impact the level of oversight.

This study investigated the focus and allocation of audit committee members' supervision on internal control over financial reporting (ICFR), as well as the factors influencing the variability in audit committee oversight. The achieved results indicated that most of the audit committee members of Tehran Stock Exchange companies do not have specific procedures, processes, and metrics to oversee the ICFR in the audit committees. Furthermore, audit committee members allocate the least time to the most critical component of internal controls, namely, the control environment.

Perishable products suffer from spoilage and quality loss after a period, so their demand decreases. To raise the level of demand and reduce the cost due to product spoilage and increase in waste, a markdown policy is used. This paper aims to find the optimal amount of discount and the initial order amount so that the total profit is maximized. The discount is offered twice during the sales period; the first discount is provided before the onset of deterioration, when and attractiveness of the product for purchase decreases. The second one is given after the deterioration starts when product spoilage is visible.

Design/methodology/approach:

 After an extensive literature review, the initial mathematical model has been shaped and solved using an analytical approach. Considering experts' opinions, the internal validity of the proposed model has been checked and confirmed. Also, the concavity conditions of the objective function and the existence of the global optimal point of the model have been investigated. Then, the values ​​of parameters have been determined by experts and placed in the model. Finally, Ofoq Kourosh Chain Stores' original sales data have been collected as a case study and the model has been solved in MATLAB software.

In this paper, the amount of the initial order was determined. Then, the optimal amount of the discount was obtained to reach the maximum profit. In this paper, the authors’ observation indicated that using the markdown pricing strategy is more profitable than the fixed pricing strategy during the sales period. This result is the most important finding of the paper, which can be calculated during the sales period examined in the Ofoq Kourosh Chain Stores. It can help decision makers of the discount chain store to set better strategies for their fresh and dairy products.

Research limitations/implications: 

Choosing a demand function that takes into account all factors affecting demand; also, Considering the optimal discount times, corresponding to the optimal discount values ​​as decision variables, complicates the model. It should be mentioned that due to limitations in the IT infrastructure of the case study and our boundaries to get information from these brick-and-mortar chain stores, it is not possible to record data in short periods (hourly) and the warehouse inventory is only available daily.
Practical implications: Since one of the main goals of the institution is to obtain maximum profit, by applying the markdown pricing strategy on perishable products, due to the quality of perishable goods being proportional to their price from the customer's point of view, it is possible to encourage them to buy the product and increase their demand. Besides, it can reduce waste which also leads to the maximization of profit. It should be noted that with the implementation of the proposed model in Ofoq Kourosh Chain Stores, it is practically shown that its implementation can make an important contribution to increasing profits.

Social implications: 

The results of this research can be used to improve the sales of perishable products, seasonal products, and fashion goods and can increase the profitability of products and reduce waste. This is also possible for consumers to have access to fresh or seasonal products at various and lower prices with different income levels. Such changes can lead to greater equality in society.

Originality/value: 

The literature review shows that the inventory control models have discussed more optimal order amount and time and less about pricing strategies and price discounts, simultaneously. The subject that is less considered in the literature, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is the determination of discount values ​​to maximize profit, which was considered in this paper.

Uncertainty is inevitable in the real world; nonetheless, fuzzy logic is regarded as one of the approaches employed in modeling such uncertainty. Therefore, a new field of mathematical programming has been proposed that is called Fuzzy Mathematical programming. Following Bellman and Zadeh, the pioneers of the Fuzzy School of Mathematics, other researchers have developed various solutions to solve fuzzy problems considering various components of mathematical models in a fuzzy condition. The present study aims to develop a novel approach to resolve investment problems using fully fuzzy mathematical model.

In general, defining the degree of fuzzy numbers, which is assumed to be fixed, should be utilized to solve the full fuzzy problem. Since the given problem is fuzzy, it is better to define a fuzzy degree to solve the problem. Thus, considering that all the components are better to be seen as fuzzy components, a fully fuzzy possibilistic-flexible composite model with a degree of fuzzy definition is developed in this study.

Finally, the proposed model used to resolve an investment problem and the results were compared to the findings of previous models. Then, the results point out a significant improvement (about 250% in intial investment) in the proposed model, which is much better than previous models.

In this study, fuzzy extent value derived from Jimenez's approach has been used to solve fully fuzzy problems. Therefore, it has provided the possibility of solving problems with multiple fuzzy objective functions and fuzzy constraints.

The major portion of Iran's annual budget belongs to state-owned companies. Their crucial role in public finances is clearly evident due to their contribution to the national economy and providing public goods and services. All these characteristics boost the need for transparent management of the companies. Using a theme analysis method, this study examines the current state of transparency of Iranian state-owned companies and examines the literature of transparency in related statements and guidelines in different countries, and presents its findings to experts and asks their views on the elements. Then this work seeks to identify the elements of improving the transparency of state-owned companies, providing information based on transparency improvement elements can lead beneficiaries' knowledge to operating environment and how the company is run. Based on the results of the study, a set of actions, considerations and elements related to the role and responsibilities of the Audit Committee, disclosure of information, budgeting and government financial management, internal audit, internal control objectives, stakeholder engagement, policies Compensation services have been introduced. These elements can be used to set a good platform for improving the transparency of public companies. Regulators can improve the transparency of activities and accountability and increase stakeholder satisfaction by incorporating study results into the provision of regulations.

Money laundering is one of the important issues that auditors should pay attention to in their investigations. Money laundering is a global issue and has devastating effects on corporate performance and auditing, and hence, on the economy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of non-compliance with anti-money laundering law on audit fee.

This research is a quantitative research from the perspective of implementation process, meaning that an objective approach is taken for data collection and quantitative analysis. Hypothesis testing was performed, using regression model and statistical sample of 78 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange during the period 2013-2017.

The findings of this study, in line with the literature in their field, showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between non-compliance with anti-money laundering law and audit fees.

According to the results of this study, non-compliance with the anti-money laundering law increases the clients’ business risk and audit risk. Therefore, auditors increase their efforts that increase audit costs, resulting in requesting additional audit fees.

This study is aimed to examine the relation between internal control disclosures level and earning quality. Accounting earning is one of the most important elements of financial reporting and since internal control disclosures improve financial reporting quality, it can improve earning quality too. To measure internal control disclosures level, this study, using leng and ding (2011) and Kwame Agyei-Mensah (2016) , examines each firm annual report in order to calculate internal control disclosures Index. Earning quality is measured using discretionary accruals absolute value. This study begins in 2013 because "The Internal Controls Rule" for the firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange and Farabourse firms was approved by Securities and Exchange Organization in 2012. The Statistical population is firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period 2013 to 2016 and the sample consists of 424 year-firm observations. Results show that there is a positive (direct) relation between internal control disclosures level and earning quality.

The concept of continuous auditing has been around for more than three decades. Although researchers have made great progress in enhancing our understanding and the implementation of continuous auditing, several challenges remain. Improve Audit Methodology, Increase Collaboration between Internal and External Auditing Parties, Strengthen the Role of Internal Auditors within Corporate Governance are three challenges that this paper try to address by proposing a new Framework with Integrated Approach in continuous Auditing. This Approach along the three dimension: auditing tools, auditing processes, and auditors’ roles, provide a holistic picture of participation between auditing parties.

In this paper, we examined the effect of the internal control weaknesses on the firm performance and firm value for 93 firms in the Securities and Exchange of Tehran in the year 1394. This research can reduce the gap in the relevant literature and provide evidence about the effect of the instruction of the internal controls passed by the Securities and Exchange Organization of Tehran. To evaluate the internal control weaknesses, we used the auditor reports on internal controls based on the internal controls instruction of Securities and Exchange Organization of Tehran enacted in 16/02/1391 and the list of internal control requirements published with that instruction. In order to measure the Firm performance, we used Return on Assets (ROA) and market value of the firm stock was used for measuring the firm value. Based on hypotheses, we expected the negative and significant effect of internal control weaknesses on the firm performance. By cross-sectional regressions, we concluded that internal control weaknesses have a negative effect on the firm performance and firm market value. Also, the results show that internal control weaknesses have a negative effect on the relation between accounting income and firm market value.

One serious drawback of the application of data envelopment analysis in insurance firm efficiency evaluation has been the absence of decision-maker and experts’ opinions, allowing total freedom while allocating weights to input and output data of insurance firms under analysis. This allows insurance firms to achieve artificially highly efficient grants by ignoring some important inputs and outputs. The most widespread method for considering decision-maker and experts’ opinions in data envelopment analysis models is, perhaps, the weight restrictions inclusion. Weight restrictions allow for the integration of decision maker and experts’ opinions and controlling the range of weight changes in Data Envelopment analysis. Therefore, in this paper, an adjusted range measurement model considering the weight restrictions once and not considering weight restrictions later is used. The average efficiency of the adjusted range measurement model with and without considering the weight restrictions is 0.927 and 0.959, respectively. The number of efficient branches in the presence of weight restrictions has decreased from 71 units to 24 units representing the impact of these restrictions. This article intended to propose a new data envelopment model regarding an adjusted range measure and considering the weight restrictions and the model was tested on Iran insurance company.

Literature review of the research suggests that equity incentives have mutual effect on earnings management. If corporate governance is strong, equity incentives will caused alignment in equity and management incentives; but if corporate governance is weak, equity incentives will caused earnings management. According to this, the main objective of this research is evaluating the effect of corporate governance on the relationship between earnings management and equity incentives. For this purpose, using multiple regression, the effects of strength and weakness of corporate governance, the ratio of each company-year bonuses to each industry-year bonuses, and Interaction of equity incentives and corporate governance on the real earnings management have been estimated. The sample of research consisted of 160-year-Company between the years 1388 to 1393, that have been selected by using systematic elimination from the companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange.
The results showed that when supervision is high and corporate governance is strong, providing discount, deferred sales to change the normal operation of sales and reduce research and development (R&D) expenditure to increase sales and profit (compared to when such mechanism are not established) are limited in throughput. Reducing the severity of monitoring, leading to opportunistic behavior of management and it increase the level of sales through manipulation the discount rates of sales and credit conditions.

This research examines the relation between managerial ability and financial reporting quality in Tehran Stock Exchange. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significant relationship between managerial ability and financial reporting quality. Multivariate regression method and Eviews software package was used to review the hypothesis. The data analysis of 102 firms show, that there is a negative and significant relation between managerial ability and financial reporting quality and managers use their ability to manage accruals. Of course, With considering a dummy variable (audit size) in the research model, the results shows that when there is a big auditor, more able managers do not manage accruals and the quality of financial reporting increases.

Existing theories predict two contradict relation between industry competition and audit fees. Industry competition reduces the agency problem between manager and stockholder of firms and also increases the accuracy of financial statement. It therefore decreases the assessment of risk by auditors and they are inclined to charge low audit fee for companies operating in competitive industry. On the other hand industry competition can increase: the assessment of business risk by auditor, so it would be expected as the competition in industry rises the audit fee, the current study examine empirically "The impact of monopoly or industry competition on pricing obtained from external audit services "with the information of 96 publicly-held companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) Between 2009-2016. The result of study shows the significant and negative relation between audit fee and industry competition. In other words, auditor charge low audit fee for client which operate in high competitive industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of various financial and non-financial variables on the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports of listed Iranian firms. The research paper has been based on a sample of 203 firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange during the study period from 1391 to 1392. Also, the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method is used for testing hypotheses. The disclosure score used in this study is unweighted relative disclosure index consisting of 50 voluntary items based on accounting standards for measuring voluntary disclosure in annual reports. The empirical results indicate that only one of the corporate characterizes (Size) has a significant positive association with voluntary disclosure. This study does not find any significant relationship between Age, Leverage, Liquidity, Profitability, Audit firm size with the extent of voluntary disclosure

For investors and other stakeholder like creditors, earnings is very important. Trade credit has an important role in financing policy of a company. There are ways that creditors can protect themselves from loss; one of them is evaluating finance situation of their customers. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between earnings quality and trade credit. A sample of 88 listed companies in Tehran stock exchange between 2008 and 2013 formed this study. Accruals quality and volatility of earnings were used as proxies for earnings quality. We used the model developed by Dechow and Dichev (2002) to measure accruals quality. Earnings volatility was also measured according to Francis et al (2004). The findings of the study showed no relationship between earnings volatility and trade credit but indicated significant positive relationship between accruals quality and trade credit.

International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) provides a framework explaining the development of management accounting based on a four stages ‘Evolution’ model including: 1) Cost determination and financial control, 2) Collection and Processing of information for planning and control purposes, 3) Business process and resources waste reduction, 4) Value creation through effective use of resources. In this study, we sought to understand the current standing of Management Accounting in Iran and the stage it revolves as per above listed four stages. Abdelkader and Luther (2006) with its proposed draft in several conferences and interviews with Management Accounting experts in UK; revealed that the resulted Cronbach's alpha coefficient from their studies stands higher than 0.63, which assignes 40 techniques, concepts and practices of Management Accounting to the four stages of development. In this thesis we studied the status of these 40 techniques in Iran. The first level, "Cost Determination and Financial Control", is being frequently used, however other levels are being used in a much lower degree. Two management accounting practices were found to be indisputably widely used, these are "A Plant-wide Overhead Rate" and "Performance Evaluation Based on Financial Measures". Seven Management Accounting practices were found to be used moderately ,Other management accounting practices are being used at a lower degree. The importance level of the first stage "Cost Determination and Financial Control" is moderate; however the importance level of following three stages is high. The importance of these stages from the lowest to the highest are as follows; the first stage, the second stage, the fourth stage and finally the third stage. "A Plant-wide Overhead Rate" as a management accounting practices, was shown to have lower importance. 14 management accounting practices were found to be moderately important including.Finally importance level of 21 management accountingpractices is high. The high priority techniques for implementation in organizations are: "Performance Evaluation Based on Non-financial Measures", "Classification of Costs into Variable and Fixed", "Performance Evaluation Based on Economic Value Added", "Benchmarking" and "Activity Based Costing".

Generally, accounting is expressed as an information system whose main purpose is to provide useful information for decision making. Design, proper execution and implementation of information systems with organizational requirements, while providing a platform for providing timely and useful information, will also increase the value of the organization. This study examines the effectiveness of information systems and performance evaluation of the role and the impact on corporate performance deals. The method of survey research using questionnaires, the data was collected. After collecting the data, SPSS software was used for testing hypotheses. Overall, the statistical results show that accounting information systems while providing useful information, relevant, timely and reliable tool is useful for decision-making. In addition to complying with the requirements of accounting information systems and organizational environment; cause greater effectiveness, improve performance, and evaluate the performance of the company. Also factor in the development of an information system, establish and improve the organization's competitive advantage. Overall, these results indicate that information systems and information systems in particular accounting for the utility companies, and investment in this area is the economic justification for an organization.

The general argument of contingency theory reveals that there is no ideal or universal form for an accounting information system. Rather, the best choice of system is imposed by particular circumstances or contingencies. According to contingency theory, this study sought to identify factors affecting development of Management Accounting in Iran. Definitely, to accomplish this, current standing of Management Accounting in Iran should be studied first.
Four categories of factors were recognized as affecting factors of Management Accounting development in Iran. As per Shannon's entropy these are ranked as follows: 1) Macro Environmental Factors includes legal, technological, accountability, economic and cultural factors; 2) Organizational factors includes size, culture, ownership, human resources, senior management, funding sources, penetration of management accounting knowledge within the organization, technology and structure of the Organization, 2) Attributes of management accounting practices includes Relative advantage, Complexity, Compatibility, Observability and Trialability. Worth noting that Organizational factors along with Attributes of management accounting practices ranked the same. 3) Professional environmental factors includes localized management accounting software, presence of professional Management Accounting Associations, availability of Management Accounting Courses, availability of Management Accounting books and magazines and presence of professional management accounting code of conduct.
"Macro Environmental Factors" and "Professional Environmental Factors" affect on the "Organizational Factors". "Organizational Factors" and "Attributes of Management Accounting Practices" affect on the "Development of Management Accounting". The results of Management Accounting development are "Improving Activities and Business Processes," "More Accurate Pricing of the Product", "More Accurate Product Costing" and... These are summarized as "Consequences of Management Accounting Development".

One of the factors that previous studies have identified as an influential factor in Earning Response Coefficient (ERC) is default risk. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between default risk and Earnings Response Coefficient in Tehran stock exchange during the years 1388 to 1391. This study used two proxies to measure default risk; leverage ratio and f-score. To test the effect of default risk on earnings response coefficients، reverse regression of abnormal returns and unexpected earnings is used and the effect of systematic risk and the growth opportunity on earnings response coefficients are controlled. The results of the study reveal a significant negative relationship between default risk and ERC. Results indicate that default risk is not only important for creditors، but it is also important for investors and affects their reaction to good and bad news from earning announcement.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Auditor’s sizes, tenure and industry specialization with stock liquidity. Pervious literature shows that auditor’s size, tenure and industry specialization are correlated with audit quality and audit quality is correlated with information asymmetry and stock liquidity. So it is expected that auditor’s size, tenure and industry specialization have relationship with stock liquidity. In order to review this relation, we used the Amihud’s illiquidity measure and liquidity rank measure as dependent variables separately. The data related to independent variables (Auditor’s size, tenure and industry specialization) is gathered from audited financial statements and to calculating industry specialization; the market share approach was used. Multivariate regression method and Eviews software package was used to review the hypothesis.Results of the review of 102 firms from1385 to 1389 (510 firm-years) show that Auditor’s size has a positive relation with stock liquidity, and if the reverse of Amihud measure was used as the dependate variable, auditor’s tenure has a positive relation with stock liquidity. Auditor’s industry specialization has no significant relation with stock liquidity, too.