International Journal of Auditing最新文献

This study examines the relationship between country-level corruption and audit pricing decisions across EU27 countries. Using a sample of 29,607 firm-year observations for the period 2011–2021, I find that firms headquartered in more corrupt countries pay higher audit fees and have longer reporting lags. I also show that this relationship is stronger after the EU audit reform came into force in 2016. The results suggest that auditors respond to corruption risk stemming from the broader macroeconomic environment by increasing audit fees and audit effort. In additional analyses, I show how the association between audit fees and corruption varies across firm industries, and I document that female engagement partners tend to be more sensitive to corruption risk than their male counterparts. Ultimately, I find unexpected evidence indicating that financial reporting quality, proxied by discretionary accruals, is not adversely affected by corruption. This study addresses prior calls for a more granular understanding of external factors in audit research and provides the first European evidence of the association between corruption and auditor responses. The implications of this study should be particularly relevant for researchers, market participants and regulators.

This study examines the effects of COVID-19 and the enhanced internal control requirements (Korea Sarbanes-Oxley or K-SOX) on audit effort in Korea. The results show that both COVID-19 and K-SOX led to increases in audit effort. Regarding the comparative magnitude of these two shocks, COVID-19 is associated with greater total audit effort, whereas K-SOX is linked to greater IT audit effort. This study also finds that Big 4 firms negatively moderate the increase in total audit effort and IT audit effort caused by COVID-19. Additionally, Big 4 firms moderate the effect of K-SOX on mid-sized clients. Specifically, Big 4 firms positively moderate the increase in total audit effort, whereas they negatively moderate the increase in IT audit effort caused by K-SOX. This study also investigates the effects of COVID-19 and K-SOX on various ranks of auditors and the effects of these exogenous events observed across different industry sectors. Our findings provide insights into the impact of an unpredicted global health crisis and predicted stringent regulations on audit effort when they occur simultaneously, an area that has never been addressed due to its unprecedented nature.

We use the data of Chinese audit firms' philanthropic activities to examine the effect of such activities on audit firms' financial performance, audit quality and auditor retention. We find that audit firms with more socially responsible activities in the prior year earn more total revenues, revenue per partner or shareholder and revenue per accountant in the current year. Besides, clients audited by socially responsible audit firms have higher audit quality and report lower income-increasing accruals, higher income-decreasing accruals, fewer below-the-line items and less frequent small positive earnings. More interestingly, clients with socially responsible audit firms have fewer auditor changes.

This paper investigates the effect of internal control quality and mandatory internal control disclosure regulation on executive perks in China. Based on a sample of Chinese firms between 2008 and 2019, this study finds that internal control quality and the mandatory disclosure regulation limit both under-consumption and over-consumption of executive perks. Furthermore, the mandatory regulation strengthens the relationship between internal control quality and the levels of executive perks. The results are consistent across alternative measures of key variables and are robust to endogeneity analyses. The findings of this study have important implications for policymakers, managers, and investors seeking to understand the determinants of the abnormal consumption of executive perks and the associated economic consequences of the internal control system.

Auditing standards have become a central feature in the world of auditing. One of the primary claims made for International Standards on Auditing (ISAs) is their capacity to reduce the audit expectations gap (AEG), but the gap persists despite the widespread adoption of ISAs. France is an intriguing case site for studying the development and impact of audit standard setting, especially given its reputation as a country for maintaining its own distinctive audit regulatory traditions. Its claimed resistance to Anglo-American influences, however, is not what stands out in our archival analysis of French audit standard-setting processes and an accompanying series of interviews with key participants. In contrast, the French audit standard setting emerges as a process that has largely aligned with the spirit of ISAs and adopted a narrow interpretation of the AEG. The presented analysis challenges the operational significance of a claimed French exceptionalism and adds to a growing questioning of the capacity of auditing standard setting to drive fundamental advancement in auditing practice and to meet public expectations.

The International Standard on Quality Management requires, among other things, that audit firm leadership promotes a quality-oriented culture in firms. We add a novel contribution to the audit quality literature by developing an instrument to measure the audit quality climate in audit firms. Our data consisted of perceptions of non-executive employees at large South African audit firms and the Auditor-General of South Africa. Instrument development followed a rigorous scale development process, beginning with the adaptation of a widely used organizational climate measure to explore audit quality at employee level. Exploratory factor analysis determined six audit quality climate dimensions. Confirmatory factor analysis provided evidence of construct validity. The six dimensions of our audit quality climate measurement instrument fit into the three types of culture currently identified in audit firms. The findings of our study are a starting point to develop an acceptable audit quality climate scale for employees in audit firms.

This study employs the Delphi–interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach to uncover and model factors influencing team performance in external audit. In Delphi interviews, 73 factors were identified, and a subsequent survey revealed 13 crucial factors. Among these, supervisor competence, team members' knowledge, and managers/supervisors' supportive attitudes were emphasized as top priorities among the essential 13 factors. These factors serve as guiding principles for interactions, shaping behaviour and attitudes. Notably, this study goes beyond previous research, which typically focussed on a limited number of factors, by identifying 73 factors influencing audit team performance and then determining and modelling the most critical factors based on expert insights. It also sheds light on the underappreciated role of supervisors, often overshadowed by audit managers or partners. Moreover, the study links these factors with transformational, servant, and ethical leadership theories, fostering a more balanced approach to future research in the auditing profession.

We examine how non-financial misconduct by corporations impacts audit outcomes. We use a novel database of penalties received by firms from federal, state and local agencies for legal violations not directly related to their financial reports and find that auditors raise fees following these violations. The magnitudes are economically significant: violating firms pay about $162,000 or 6% more in audit fees than comparable firms without violations. Additionally, auditors charge more when the penalty amounts are higher and infractions are more egregious. Companies fined for non-financial misconduct are also more likely to receive going concern opinions. Our results are robust to propensity score matching, falsification tests and firm-fixed effects and are not attributable to lax firm culture or “tone at the top”. These results highlight that firms' unethical conduct, even those that do not directly lead to financial reporting infractions, has consequences beyond just the penalties imposed by enforcement agencies.

Drawing on experiential learning theory (ELT), this study (1) explores students' perceived benefits of experiencing different learning styles through an audit simulation (AS) assignment and (2) analyses its role in enhancing students' performance at a Middle East and North Africa (MENA) university. The study compares students' performance across two different periods, 2019 and 2022, with 46 and 48 participants, respectively, independently completing a questionnaire of six open-ended questions paired with follow-up feedback, the instructor's observations and the analyses of students' grades. Our study findings indicate that the AS assignment enabled students to effectively experience different learning styles at different times during the AS learning process. They visualised an authentic AS experience by critically analysing and practically evaluating AS documents while showing strong preferences for initiating new experiences. It also reveals an improvement in students' grades after the AS implementation. Our study has theoretical implications relating to cognitive and constructivist learning, learning transfer and ethics awareness, as well as practical implications in audit education, skill development, teamwork, professional development, auditors' evaluation and curriculum assessment in other disciplines than auditing.

Internal auditing plays a pivotal role in preventing and detecting fraudulent activities. However, the orientation and role of internal auditing in dealing with fraud risk can vary significantly across different companies. This study examines the relationship between the internal audit function (IAF) and fraud, providing new insights into the current practices of internal auditing. Using a survey dataset comprising responses from 275 Chief Audit Executives across Germany, Switzerland and Austria, we investigate factors that correlate with an increased propensity for IAFs to engage in fraud prevention and detection. Our findings suggest that a robust corporate governance environment significantly influences the extent to which the IAF is involved in preventing and detecting fraud. Shedding light on the positioning of internal auditing between management and the audit committee with respect to fraud, our results show that increased IAF involvement with management positively affects the level of activities to prevent and detect fraud, while increased IAF involvement with the audit committee has the opposite effect. Furthermore, we find that the propensity of IAFs to engage in fraud prevention and detection increases when the IAF applies technology-based auditing techniques for risk identification. Our results have implications for building appropriate protection against the steadily increasing risk of fraud within organizations, while holistically addressing the ambiguity regarding the responsibility for preventing and detecting fraud.