* Corresponding author. Tel: + 216 74 680 460 E-mail address: fadhila.hamza@yahoo.com (F. Hamza) © 2016 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi: 10.5267/j.ac.2015.12.007 Accounting 2 (2016) 11–30 Contents lists available at GrowingScience Accounting homepage: www.GrowingScience.com/ac/ac.html The role of board independence on R&D investment’ choice decided by committed managers: The cognitive management of executives’ discretion Fadhila Hamza a* and Anis Jarboui b a Phd Student in Finance and Accounting Methods, University of Sfax, ISAAS 3018,Tunesia b Doctor and HDR financial and accounting, Associate Professor of Universities, Higher Institute of Business Administration (ISAAS), University of Sfax, Tunesia C H R O N I C L E A B S T R A C T Article history: Received June 5, 2015 Received in revised format August 16 2015 Accepted December 21 2015 Available online December 24 2015 This study deals with appreciating the role of both governance system and executives cognitive and attitudinal aspects in the innovation decision-making. After discussing the theoretical relationship between board independence and CEOs attitude and behavior, we are advancing an empirical model testing the correlation between the managers’ attitude and behavior towards innovation and his psychological commitment level. The CEOs commitment bias and attitude constituent were measured using questionnaire. The data analysis was performed using the Bayesian network method on 220 Tunisian executives. Empirical results confirm the theoretical prediction and shows that processing with persuasive mechanism does not have an effective role on the alignment of the manager’s attitude and behavior in key tasks such innovation decision. CEOs authentic behavior was more related to an important manager involvement in this behavior rather than to persuasive effort committed by outside directors to make him contract this action. CEOs attitude and behavior towards innovation are shown related to commitment link “manager-task” and suggests that the board of directors plays no role in the CEOs discretion management. We argue that persuasive approach is not a sufficient path in behavior and interests alignment; yet, it should be applied with the commitment approach for understanding manager decision-making. Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 6 © 201 Keywords: Commitment Bias Board Independence Innovation Decision Managerial Discretion Bayesian Network Methods 1. Introduction Innovation, as managerial decisional latitude, which requires optimistic attitude, long term horizon (James, 1999), risk-taking culture (Olivero & Jarboui, 2006), overconfidence (Chen et al., 2011) and specific expertise (Musteen et al., 2006), was managed, for a long time, through ensuring persuasive communication using discipline, motivation, empowerment, and by building structure that enhance learning. Many researchers address the problematic that what makes some executives more willing to initiate innovation as compared to other executives (Chouaibi & Affes, 2010; Ata & Jabeen, 2011). Although, researchers and theorists who are interested in evoking the human inventiveness in initiating