Earnings management takes advantage of how accounting rules are applied and creates financial statements that inflate earnings, revenue or total assets. Companies use earnings management to smooth out fluctuations in earnings and present more consistent profits each year to satisfy the investors. Moving a step further in this direction, authors of the first paper, Deepa Mangala and Mamta Dhanda, through their paper, "Earnings Management: Conceptual Framework and Research Developments", make an addition to the prevailing literature on earnings management. They present a distinctive outlook of earnings management by divulging its meaning, research developments, fundamental conditions and forms of earnings management. According to the authors, loopholes in the accounting system, market conditions and policy implementation issues give scope to the managers to indulge in earnings management. Serious research is suggested in this field so as to provide more transparent and reliable corporate financial reports to the ultimate users of the financial statements.

Large fluctuations in income and expenses may be a normal part of a company's operations, but because the investors and analysts look at earnings to determine the attractiveness of a particular stock, managers may indulge into earnings management. Since earnings are composed of cash flow from operations and accruals, firms may indulge in managing real earnings (through deviation from the normal business operations) as well as the accrual-based earnings (by altering the level of accruals to obtain the desired level of earnings). As leverage limits earnings management by decreasing cash availability with the managers for non-optimal spending, Nikhil Kaushik and Sunil Kumar, in the second paper, "Leverage Effect on Earnings Management: Evidence from India", examined the extent to which the relative costs of Real Earnings Management (REM) and Accrual-based Earnings Management (AEM) affect the leverage between both the strategies to manage earnings. They did not find any significant evidence of the role of leverage on earnings management for the Indian companies and point out that this insignificant result could be due to the implementation of revised Clause 49 of the Listing Agreement by Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in 2004 due to which fairness and reliability to financial reports of Indian companies could be observed.

The recent advancement in information technology has fascinated companies to report their activities in digital format in the internet. Higher level of disclosure quality reduces information asymmetry enhancing the firm's capacity for better investment and firm value. Being the supreme executive authority in controlling the affairs of the business, are the board of directors efficient enough for full and fair disclosure of all material events of the company in public? This question was studied by Harmandeep Singh and Arwinder Singh, in the third paper, "Board Efficiency and Internet Reporting Quality: An Empirical Study of Indian Public Sector Giants". They find that public sector companies with small board size and lower debt are meant to disclose more information on their web pages. Their results suggest that board monitoring affects the quality of internet reporting. Investors are recommended to be more skeptical and are advised to analyze the financial statements thoroughly before investing in any firm.

It is found that one of the main reasons for the failure of a business is lack of proper exposure to the accounting process especially usage of management accounting. Therefore, in the fourth paper, "Management Accounting: A Tool to Achieve Entrepreneurial Goals", the author, C S Devendra Jarwal, sets an objective to determine the role of management accounting in achieving the entrepreneurial goals. The author attempts to study the linkage between the use of accounting information and achievement of the entrepreneurial goals using purposive sampling and finds significant evidence that management accounting information leads to effective decision making. The author strongly recommends formal training of entrepreneurs to enable them understand the financial records as well as correct or modify any area of financial concern in their business operations.

The author, Kabir, of the research note, "A Note on Companies (Auditor's Report) Order, 2003 and 2015", presents a descriptive study comparing CARO 2003 with CARO 2015 and highlights the benefits and value-added features of CARO 2015. The author suggests harmonization of Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) with ICAI, so that a single reporting requirement can encompass the objective envisaged in the Companies Audit and Auditors Rules, 2014 and the CARO 2015.