External Auditors Attributes and Real Earnings Management

This study evaluated the effect external auditors’ attributes and real earnings management in Nigeria listed firm. The objective of the study is to investigate whether audit firm size has significant effect on real earnings management and to ascertain whether auditor switching has a significant effect on real earning management of the Nigeria listed firm. The secondary source of data collection was adopted in the study where the purposive sampling technique was used to select size of ten (10) listed firm of the study. Least square regression analysis was used in this study and the findings revealed that audit firms size has no significant effect on real earnings management of listed firms in Nigeria and that auditor switching has significant effect on real earnings management of listed firm in Nigeria. The study concluded that there have a lot of corporate indignities in academic fiction and across the accounting career on audit tenure, objectivity and financial reporting quality and that it was worthy of note that these financial scandals have been a big challenge to the credibility and relevance of the audit work. Finally, the study recommended that firms under review should endeavor to maintain or increase the size of their firms to a large one because, this will enable them to monitor the activities of management and also build a strong internal control system and governance apparatus that will help them lessen or reduce earnings management practices.