An in-depth understanding of the factors influencing the earnings management of listed firms can help optimize China’s capital market ecology and ensure the full implementation of the registration system. The existing literature pays less attention to the characteristics of earnings management as a collective task, and ignores the impact of the intra-organizational informal relationships(IR) on earnings management by reducing collusion costs.This paper examines for the first time the impact of IR on the earnings management of listed firms.The results show that: 1)the stronger the IR, the higher the degree of earnings management, and this finding still holds after a series of robustness tests; 2)The more firms need to reduce the cost of collusion, the more pronounced the positive effect of IR on earnings management; 3) Providing higher levels of employee benefits is an important channel through which IR influence earnings management.This paper provides a new perspective for understanding the factors influencing earnings management.