Accounting Conservatism and Corporate Performance: The Moderati ng Effect of the Board of Directors

The purpose of this article is to clarify the moderating effect of the board of directors in the relationship between the accounting conservatism and companies' performance. Previous studies have investigated the impact of corporate governance on the level of accounting conservatism. Our objective is to study the effect on the relationship between the level of accounting conservatism and performance of a central governance mechanism, namely, the board of directors. Using a sample of 60 French listed companies belonging to the SBF 120 index in all the period 2007-2012, we examine the effect of the size, the composition and the structure of such a mechanism on the relationship between the accounting conservatism and companies' performance. Therefore, most of our findings support the moderating impact of such a mechanism that has been ignored or left out by earlier studies.