This British Accounting & Finance Association (BAFA) distinguished academic 2020 plenary address marries the researcher's two main research areas – financial reporting and corporate governance. Like Vivien Beattie (BAFA 2011 distinguished academic), the researcher commenced in the positivist tradition but was increasingly drawn to more qualitative, interdisciplinary perspectives, influencing the paper's positioning.

“Accounting choice”, “income smoothing”, “earnings management”, and “earnings manipulation” are terms frequently used in the academic literature. This paper reviews these terms, highlighting the resonances and dissonances between them, and attempts to reconcile varied perspectives in the prior literature. The paper critiques taken-for-granted assumptions underlying this stream of research. The paper then examines prior earnings management research using alternative methodologies to deepen understanding of the four terms in praxis (best practice in practice). The paper reviews prior research on boards of directors using alternative methodologies to those adopted in mainstream corporate governance research, to provide a menu of opportunities to research earnings management inside the “black box” of the boardroom, including proposed research questions for future research. The paper concludes by considering the implications for policymakers and standard setters.

这场英国会计与金融协会 (BAFA) 2020 年杰出学术全体会议将研究人员的两个主要研究领域——财务报告和公司治理结合在一起。与 Vivien Beattie（BAFA 2011 杰出学者）一样，这位研究人员从实证主义传统开始，但越来越多地被定性的、跨学科的观点所吸引，从而影响了论文的定位。

“会计选择”、“收入平滑”、“盈余管理”和“盈余操纵”是学术文献中经常使用的术语。本文回顾了这些术语，强调了它们之间的共鸣和不和谐，并试图调和先前文献中的不同观点。该论文批评了这一研究流背后的理所当然的假设。然后，本文使用替代方法检查先前的盈余管理研究，以加深对实践中四个术语的理解（实践中的最佳实践）。该论文使用主流公司治理研究中采用的替代方法回顾了先前对董事会的研究，以提供在董事会“黑匣子”内研究盈余管理的机会菜单，包括为未来研究提出的研究问题。本文最后考虑了对政策制定者和标准制定者的影响。