Creative Accounting Incentives and Techniques in Saudi Public Companies: A Survey Study

Creative accounting refers to accounts manipulation practices that are used to conceal the true performance of a company by using the flexibility and discretion available in accounting standards and principles without crossing the boundaries of GAAP. It has been believed that companies tend to practice creative accounting techniques to acquire personal or organizational benefits. These practices are considered to be a serious threat to market participants' confidence in published financial statements. Moreover, some researchers believe that creative accounting has an important role in most of last decade's financial scandals, which led to the profession's failure in reaching its expected level. This study was motivated by the results of (Asiri, 2002). It aimed to expand and update the main findings of that study, namely that Saudi public companies practice creative accounting in preparing financial statements. The objective of this study is to determine creative accounting incentives and techniques in Saudi public companies from the academics and practitioners perspectives. It also examines their opinion about the extent to which those techniques comply with GAAP. Depending on statistical methods, this study finds that there are at least ten incentives for Saudi public companies to practice creative accounting. It also concludes that Saudi public companies do practice creative accounting techniques in the area of classification, timing, disclosure and estimation. And that most of these techniques do not comply with GAAP. Finally, the study shows that there are significant differences between academics' opinions in creative accounting and that of practitioners' by 60% for incentives and 47% for techniques.