We propose that corporate directors are in greater need of soft information about the firm when the quality of hard accounting information is low. We further propose that board meetings constitute a key opportunity for corporate directors to gather soft information about the firm, and empirically investigate the relationship between financial reporting quality and the board's soft information gathering, as revealed by board meeting frequency. Consistent with expectations, we find that boards meet more frequently when accruals quality is low. We further find that the proportion of outside directors, insider ownership, and SOX regulation moderate this relationship. The evidence is reinforced by analysis of management earnings forecasts, financial restatements, and internal control weaknesses and is robust to several alternative earnings quality specifications. Additional empirical tests suggest that our results are incremental to the alternative explanation of increased meeting frequency to address problems in the reporting process per se. We conclude that corporate directors seek more frequent board meetings as an alternative information source to low earnings quality.

我们认为，当硬会计信息的质量较低时，公司董事更需要公司的软信息。我们进一步提出，董事会会议是公司董事收集公司软信息的关键机会，并实证研究财务报告质量与董事会软信息收集之间的关系，如董事会会议频率所揭示的那样。与预期一致，我们发现当应计质量较低时，董事会开会的频率会更高。我们进一步发现，外部董事的比​​例、内部持股比例和 SOX 监管调节了这种关系。对管理层盈利预测、财务重述和内部控制缺陷的分析强化了证据，并且对几种替代盈利质量规范来说是稳健的。额外的实证测试表明，我们的结果是增加会议频率以解决报告过程本身问题的替代解释的增量。我们的结论是，公司董事寻求更频繁的董事会会议，作为低盈利质量的替代信息来源。