The Impact of Benefit Plan Audits on Financial Statement Auditor Choice and Financial Statement Audit Quality

Author(s):  
Jaclyn Prentice ◽  
Kenneth L. Bills ◽  
Gary F. Peters
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Moser

This paper investigates the impact of increased audit market competition on audit quality and auditor choice. I develop a model comprising two auditors who compete for a new client by choosing the audit quality for their respective existing clients and using the audited report as a signal. I identify factors that influence auditor quality decisions as well as the behavior of clients, who potentially misstate their reports. Auditors are tempted to alter audit quality because they are eager to appear desirable from a new client's perspective. Interestingly, while recipients of the audited report adjust their conjectures about audit quality, there are conditions under which auditors lower their audit quality to increase the likelihood of being hired. The analysis extends the existing literature by describing a new approach to modeling the auditors' motivation to signal reputation for certain behavior.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuan Huang ◽  
Fei Kang

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how companies’ reputation affects their selection of auditors. Design/methodology/approach This paper measures company reputation using the reputation scores from Fortune’s “America’s Most Admired Companies” list. Multivariate analysis is performed to examine the impact of company reputation on public companies’ auditor choice. Robustness checks include conducting Heckman procedures and instrumental-variable two-stage least square regressions to control for self-selection bias and using alternative measures to proxy for company reputation and auditor industry expertise. Findings This paper finds that companies with higher reputations are more likely to hire industry-specialist auditors than their counterparts. The results suggest that because of reputation concerns, high-reputation companies have strong incentives to maintain and signal their financial reporting quality, which in turn increase their demand for audit quality. Practical implication This paper suggests that company reputation constitutes an important determinant of auditor selection and, therefore, has both policy and practical implications for the demand of audit services. The paper provides policy-makers and practitioners with insights into critical factors influencing companies’ complex decision process of auditor selection. Originality/value The findings of this paper on the empirical link between company reputation and auditor choice contribute to the auditing literature by enhancing the understanding of the effects of different company-level characteristics in financial reporting and audit planning process. This paper also adds to the growing literature on the influence of company reputation on corporate behavior by documenting the important role that company reputation plays in the managerial decision-making process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-55
Author(s):  
Ying Deng ◽  
Graham Bowrey ◽  
Greg Jones

There has been an ongoing concern with the quality of financial audit reports issued by registered public accounting firms in relation to financial accountability and transparency of the financial statements. In July 2009 the Public Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) released a concept paper outlining changes to the requirements of financial audit activities such as the inclusion of the engagement partner’s signature on the financial audit reports. The aim of these new requirements was to improve the accountability of engagement partners as well as enhance the perception of transparency of the audit reports. However, the contribution and effectiveness of these requirements to improve accountability and transparency of audit reports for various stakeholders relying on the audited financial information is questionable. This study explores the impact and effectiveness of changes to auditing regulation and processes through the application of Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach which is based on social conditioning, social interaction, and social elaboration where the structural influences provides the environment for agents to differentiate themselves. In addition, this study demonstrates how proposed regulation changes mould the qualities of audit regulation, the profession and the auditor whose perspectives deserved to be noticed from the dominant constituencies structured by the propositions of a morphogenetic analysis.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 1089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hakwoon Kim ◽  
Hyoik Lee ◽  
Jong Eun Lee

Recently, regulators and policy makers who witnessed the global financial crisis during 20072009 began considering a variety of ways to enhance auditor independence and financial reporting quality, ultimately aiming at investor protection. Since the enactment of the SarbanesOxley Act of 2002 (SOX), the Mandatory Audit Firm Rotation (MAFR) requirement has once again received significant attention from regulators and policy makers around the world, including the European Union (EU) and the U.S. Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). In this paper, we investigate whether MAFR enhances audit quality in Korea. We find that under MAFR, newly rotated auditors are more likely to issue first-time going-concern audit opinions to financially distressed firms during their initial (first-year) financial statement audit compared with under the Voluntary Audit Firm Change (VAFC). Moreover, firms audited by mandatorily rotated new auditors have less discretionary accruals and higher accrual quality than those audited by voluntarily switched new auditors during the initial audit engagement. These results of earnings quality are more pronounced for firms that received a first-time going-concern audit opinion during the initial financial statement audit under MAFR. Taken together, the findings suggest that MAFR produces better audit quality than the VAFC. Further, our study provides implications for regulators and policy makers of countries considering the adoption of MAFR.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea M. Rozario ◽  
Chanta Thomas

ABSTRACT Blockchain and smart contracts are evolving business practices by enhancing efficiencies and transparency in the value chain. The fusion of these innovations is also likely to transform auditing by automating workflows but more importantly, by enhancing audit effectiveness and reporting. This paper envisions the future financial statement audit by proposing an external audit blockchain that supports smart audit procedures. The external audit blockchain has the potential to improve audit quality and narrow the expectation gap between auditors, financial statement users, and regulatory bodies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Jengfang Chen ◽  
Rong-Ruey Duh ◽  
Kuei-Fu Li

ABSTRACT While mandatory audit fee disclosure makes fee information transparent, there have been concerns about the impact of price adjustment on audit quality. Taking advantage of a regulatory change in Taiwan that required public companies to disclose audit fee but allowed two alternative disclosure forms (amount disclosure or range disclosure), this study investigates the impact of the fee disclosure form on price adjustment and the influence of such adjustment on audit quality. Using a dataset including audit fees under the two disclosure forms, we find that, for overcharged companies, the downward adjustment is larger for amount disclosure companies than range disclosure companies and such downward adjustment increase discretionary accruals in amount disclosure companies but not for range disclosure companies. Our study helps understand the impact of different fee disclosure forms on price adjustment and audit quality, which should be of interest to regulators and financial statement users in Taiwan and beyond.


2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 1193-1213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne C. Jones

ABSTRACT Zoom Snowboards Incorporated is a fictitious Canadian private company in the snowboard industry. While the company is fictitious, many of the facts are adopted from actual snowboard companies. The overall goal of this case is to give the students an opportunity to develop their ability to perform a rigorous analysis of an assurance case with multiple issues. Students assume the role of audit senior and are asked to prepare an audit planning memo for the partner. In order to perform a rigorous analysis, students will need to consider the broader issues related to business strategy, risk management, and corporate governance, as well as the regular components of an audit planning memo. Students will also need to consider how the various requests from client management, the bank, and the audit committee impact the financial statement audit as they are preparing their planning memo.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. P1-P6
Author(s):  
David N. Herda ◽  
Nathan H. Cannon ◽  
Randall F. Young

SUMMARY This article summarizes a recent academic study (Herda, Cannon, and Young 2019) that investigates the effects of supervisor coaching and staff auditors' workplace mindfulness on premature sign-off—a serious audit quality-threatening behavior that can go undetected through the review process. Our study predicts and finds that staff auditors who are coached by supervisors to consider the impact of their work on external financial statement users are more mindful (i.e., more attentive and aware) during an audit and less likely to engage in premature sign-off. The results highlight the importance of workplace mindfulness in an audit environment and suggest that supervisor coaching is a practical technique to elicit workplace mindfulness among staff-level auditors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-26
Author(s):  
Mohammad hossein nabatdoust baghmisheh ◽  
Heydar Mohammad ZadehSaleteh ◽  
◽  

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