Abstract
This study investigates the firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from the perspective of Earnings’ Management (EM) and role of Corporate Governance (CG) in this relationship.  Current study adopted a systematic review approach to investigate this overarching idea. Systematic review findings revealed that by and large negative relationship between CSR and EM is  more dominant which highlighted the notion that CSR oriented firms are less intended to engage in EM practices. However, evidence of positive relationship between CSR and EM was also  provided by some studies and concluded that CSR is used by mangers to mask their EM practice. In addition, studies found the significant moderating role of CG between CSR and EM  relationship, though evidence was very limited. Moreover, although the research on CSR-EM is very limited, yet it produced mixed results due to the important neglecting factors like lack of sufficient theoretical support, use of different types of EM and varying approaches of measuring CSR. Findings revealed that mostly studies used Accrual type of earnings’ management but use  of real activities based EM type is very rare. Measuring approaches of CSR also varied across the sample of selected studies. Most of studies used social indices approach to measure  CSR and very few followed the content analysis approach especially in developing context.
Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Governance and Earnings’ Management, Systematic Review, Accrual, Real.