The impact of sustainability standards on the Earnings quality and Investors’ confidence

(A study of a sample of industrial companies listed in the Iraq Stock Exchange)

Presented to

The council of the college of administration and Economics – Karbala University It is part of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of science in Accounting

By

Khitam Raheem Sebr AL- Dulimi

Supervised by

Dr. Amal Mohammad Salman AL- Tamimi

Abstract…
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This research aims to identify the impact of sustainability standards in accordance with the standards of the Global Sustainability Reporting Initiative (GRI) through its four dimensions (economic, environmental,
social and governance) in enhancing the earnings quality and investors’ confidence, and identifying differences with statistical significance according to the research variables (Sustainability standards as the independent variable and the earnings quality and investors’ confidence as the two dependent variables), For the purpose of achieving the objectives of this research, a questionnaire was designed that dealt with the relationship between the application of sustainability standards, earnings quality and investors’ confidence according to dimensions of sustainability (GRI) the four.
The questionnaire (121) was distributed to a group of accountants, auditors, investors in industrial companies, as well as university professors, in a survey of their opinions, and it was relied on (112) questionnaires after excluding (9) questionnaires for not meeting the conditions. The statistical programs SPSS program and Amos program and appropriate statistical methods were used to test the hypotheses. The questionnaire included three axes, the first includes four dimensions, the second earnings quality, and the third investors’ confidence by (46 paragraphs).The most important conclusions reached by the researcher are that there is an acceptable level of application of sustainability standards in the local environment, and its correlation with a positive statistically significant positive relationship with the earnings quality and investors’ confidence. It also indicated that there is a morale effect of the
independent variable (sustainability standards) on the two dependent variables (earnings quality and investors’ confidence).
In light of these results, a number of recommendations were presented, the most important of which are: the necessity for the Iraqi Securities Commission to issue laws and legislation obligating companies to adopt sustainability standards, and the need for companies’ management to pay attention to adopting sustainability standards because this leads to increased disclosure of companies’ sustainability reports, which positively reflects on improving the earnings quality and enhance investors’ confidence