Abstract
This study investigates the influence of audit committee chair characteristics on earnings management (EM) among 128 non-financial companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange from 2021 to 2025. The characteristics assessed include gender (ACCGEN), race (ACCRM), financial expertise (ACCFE), multiple directorships (ACCMD), squared multiple directorships (ACCMD2), tenure (ACCTEN), and squared tenure (ACCTEN2). Both accruals earnings management (AEM) and real earnings management (REM) were employed to evaluate EM. Data sources included the Who Owns Whom and Osiris databases, as well as integrated annual reports. The fixed-effects model linear regression results indicated that ACCFE has a significant positive effect on REM, whereas ACCGEN exhibits a significant negative effect. Conversely, ACCFE demonstrated a significant negative impact on AEM, aligning with agency and social capital theories. Furthermore, the curvilinear regression analysis revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between ACCMD and ACCMD2, showing positive effects on AEM and negative effects on REM. Additionally, ACCTEN negatively influenced AEM, while ACCTEN2 had a positive effect, suggesting a U-shaped association. In contrast, REM displayed an inverted U-shaped association, positively influenced by ACCTEN but negatively impacted by ACCTEN2. The observed U-shaped and inverted U-shaped relationships in these curvilinear data underscore the integration of the reputation and busyness hypotheses. Consequently, the results of this study indicate that no single audit committee chair characteristic is universally effective in mitigating proxies of EM.