The impact of corporate governance on auditor choice: Evidence from China

As the largest and fastest growing emerging market, China is becoming more and more important to investors throughout the world. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of firms’ auditor choice in China in respect of their corporate governance mechanism. Normally firms have to take a trade-off in their auditor choice decisions, i.e., to hire high-quality auditors to signal effective audit monitoring and good corporate governance to lower their capital raising costs, or to select low-quality auditors with less effective audit monitoring in order to reap private benefits derived from weak corporate governance and less-transparent disclosure (the opaqueness gains). We develop a logit regression model to test the impact of firms’ internal corporate governance mechanism on auditor choice decisions made by IPO firms getting listed during a bear market period of 2001–2004 in China. Three variables are used to proxy for firms’ internal corporate governance mechanism, i.e., the ownership concentration, the size of the supervisory board (SB), and the duality of CEO and chairman of board of directors (BoDs). We classify all auditors in China into large auditors (Top 10) and others (non-Top 10), assuming the large auditors can provide higher quality audit services. The empirical results show that firms with larger controlling shareholders, with smaller size of SB, or in which CEO and BoDs chairman are the same person, are less likely to hire a Top 10 (high-quality) auditor. This suggests that when benefits from lowering capital raising costs are trivial, firms with weaker internal corporate governance mechanism are inclined to choose a low-quality auditor so as to capture and sustain their opaqueness gains. On the other hand, with improvement of corporate governance, firms should be more likely to appoint high-quality auditors.     

Corporate director liability and monitoring preferences

An important issue in the regulation of corporate behavior is its impact on the monitoring configuration selected by top management. In this article, we provide evidence consistent with the notion that the recent trend toward audit committee formation, and the movement toward Big-Eight auditors, are responses to increased legal exposure of the board of directors, notably stemming from the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. The costs associated with changes in monitoring configurations are also considered. In particular, it is argued that auditor assistance can substantially reduce the cost of audit committee formation. Because external auditors may have differential incentives to support audit committee formation, a hypothesis linking auditor identity and audit committee formation is offered. Recent auditor changes and audit committee formations of American Stock Exchange companies are examined to provide positive evidence for the theory. The data reveal a clear trend to form audit committees, and a movement to Big-Eight auditors. Underscoring the importance of auditor involvement, it is shown that audit committees were more likely to be formed given recent selection of a new Big-Eight auditor.     

Internal auditors’ use of interpersonal likability,arguments, and accounting information in a corporate governance setting

Internal auditors play an important role in influencing managers’ judgments. Yet, the practitioner literature indicates that, because internal audit lacks the client services incentives of external audit, internal auditors often adopt a “policeman approach” that can lead to negative interpersonal relationships with managers. We investigate three variables fundamental to internal auditors’ ability to influence managers: (1) internal auditors’ interpersonal likability, (2) the information used to support their positions, and (3) whether they present that information in a thematically organized argument. We find that managers agree more with an internal auditor who is both likable and uses a thematically organized argument. We find further that this joint effect occurs regardless of whether the internal auditor’s information is relatively supportive or unsupportive of his position. Overall, our theory and findings suggest that an internal auditor can achieve agreement from managers on important corporate governance issues with this fairly straightforward presentation tactic, even when the underlying information is relatively unsupportive and managers otherwise tend not to agree with the internal auditor’s position. Our study contributes to accounting, psychology, and writing and discourse theories with new evidence of the effects of an argument structure (holding the underlying information constant) on users’ judgments, and how those effects depend on the likability of the source of information. Our findings have important implications for internal auditors, managers, external auditors, and others interested in corporate governance.     

Effects of managerial overconfidence and ability on going-concern decisions and auditor turnover

I examine how the appearance of managerial overconfidence and managerial ability affect 1) auditors' decisions to issue a going concern opinion and 2) auditor dismissal rates after issuing a going concern opinion. Managerial attributes are likely to have an influence on auditors' decisions because auditors obtain and evaluate information about client management's remedy plans when there is substantial doubt about the entity's ability to continue as a going concern. While prior literature on managerial overconfidence classifies all managers who demonstrate overconfident behaviors in one group, I argue that the literature needs to take managerial ability into consideration when measuring overconfidence. I find that auditors are more likely to issue a going concern opinion to clients with seemingly overconfident managers only when the management who appears overconfident is also incompetent. I also find that auditors are more likely to be dismissed after issuance of a going concern opinion when the client company has seemingly overconfident management. Finally, I find that the association between managerial overconfidence and auditor dismissal subsequent to issuance of a going concern opinion is stronger when management is relatively more powerful than the company's audit committee.     

Intersections of law and accountancy: Unlimited auditor liability in the United Kingdom

In recent years, considerable pressure has grown within the British auditing industry for limitation of liability arising from negligent mis-statements in audit reports. Under British company law, auditors are forbidden from contracting with companies for their liability to be restricted. This legal provision was introduced in the Companies Act 1929 as a byproduct of legislation relating to directors' liability. The paper explores the background to this legal provision, observing that auditor liability cannot be viewed as a self-contained matter of interest only to a limited community. Attitudes to auditor liability have been shaped against a background of changes in the law of negligence, some, but by no means all, arising from cases involving auditors. Moreover, changing concepts of the position of the auditor within corporate governance structures have at different times encouraged and discouraged the assimilation of the legal treatments of auditors and directors. These concepts themselves reflect differing notions of what actually constitutes the “company”: a collectivity of shareholders or a separate entity controlled by directors. These notions emerged against a background of corporate failure and the need to allocate losses among various parties with different degrees of culpability for failure. However, legal developments do not account by themselves for changing attitudes within the auditing industry towards unlimited liability; acceptance of full responsibility for one's statements, adopted as a badge of professional status, has more recently been seen as inhibiting the commercial development of British auditing.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Interface Between Internal and External Auditors

Professional standards place specific responsibilities on auditors for the discovery of material mis-statements in reports of corporate financial performance. Certain factors have been shown to increase the likelihood of fraudulent financial reporting. One warning sign is the potentially pervasive effect of a weak internal control environment consistent with a weak internal audit group. This study investigates the impact of internal audit department quality differences on auditors ‘willingness to place reliance on the work performed by internal auditors. The study also gives consideration to auditors’ recent experiences with material errors and irregularities and examines the influence of two previously untested individual auditor differences on audit judgment decisions: (1) conflict management style and (2) perception of internal/external auditor communication barriers. The results indicate that auditors attend to internal audit department quality differences and that individual auditor differences exhibit significant influence over auditor judgments. Implications for audit practice are considered and directions for future research are suggested.     

Group audits: Are audit quality and price associated with the Lead auditor’s decision to accept responsibility?

Lead auditors frequently rely on work performed by Other auditors, especially when auditing clients with operations in multiple countries. The PCAOB has expressed concern that the quality of such group audits may differ depending on whether the Lead auditor accepts or declines responsibility for work done by Other auditors. The PCAOB also has been concerned with the venue through which Lead auditors and Other auditors disclose their participation in group audits, including disclosure of whether Lead auditors accept or decline responsibility. To investigate these issues, we employ a sample consisting entirely of group audit engagements. We identify Lead auditors taking responsibility from PCAOB Form 2, filed by Other auditors of U.S. registrants for fiscal years 2009 to 2017. We identify Lead auditors not accepting responsibility from audit report disclosures during the same period. The results suggest that Lead auditors accepting responsibility charge higher audit fees but provide audits of no higher quality, and possibly of even lower quality. These results are robust to various additional analyses. Our research contributes to the ongoing debate over how the participation of Other auditors affects audit quality.     

Institutional Ownership and the Selection of Industry Specialist Auditors

This study provides evidence linking corporate governance mechanisms to the choice of auditor, namely industry specialists. Given that institutional investors are likely to prefer higher quality financial reports to lower quality reports, we theorize that institutional investors will influence managers of companies in which they invest to improve reporting quality by using higher quality, industry specialist auditors. Our findings indicate that firms having relatively greater levels of institutional ownership tend to employ industry specialist audit firms. The results of this study contribute to an understanding of an important facet of corporate governance, the selection of a high quality audit firm.     

The influence of auditor narcissism and moral disengagement on risk assessments of a narcissistic client CFO

Global capital markets rely heavily on independent and skeptical auditors as gatekeepers to provide assurance that corporate financial reports are free of material fraud. The rise of narcissism among the ranks of both client and audit professionals challenge this gatekeeper function. In addition, auditor moral disengagement may undermine auditor skepticism, further eroding public confidence in the integrity of financial reporting and the audit process. We conduct a quasi-experiment with 118 auditors from three international audit firms. In a simulated interview with a client CFO, we examine whether auditors underestimate risks of fraudulent financial statements due to the interactive effects of (1) client narcissism (manipulated verbally and nonverbally) and (2) auditor narcissism. We also examine the influence of auditor moral disengagement on client risk assessments. Results indicate that CFO verbal and nonverbal narcissism significantly influenced auditors’ assessment of management-related client risk. Moreover, auditor narcissism was found to interactively influence client risk inferences such that auditors higher in narcissism exhibited narcissistic tolerance (lower risk assessments) when the hypothetical CFO displayed high verbal narcissism. Auditor moral disengagement was negatively associated with client risk assessments. We discuss the implication of these findings on future audit judgment research, audit firm policy and training on maintaining auditor skepticism, and the audit oversight role of standard-setters.     

Pro forma disclosures,audit fees,and auditor resignations

The disclosure of non-GAAP (pro forma) earnings numbers by managers in the post-SOX era continues to attract attention from regulators, media, and researchers. However, there is limited empirical evidence on how auditors view clients that emphasize pro forma earnings over GAAP earnings. We study the extent to which audit fees and auditor resignations are associated with opportunistic non-GAAP disclosures. We find that during the pre-SOX period, optimistic pro forma differences, measured using either IBES actual earnings or hand-collected pro forma earnings, are associated with higher audit fees and a higher likelihood of auditor resignations. Additional results indicate that auditors seem to be more concerned with non-GAAP earnings disclosures in the post-SOX period.     

The determinants of auditor switching from the perspective of corporate governance in China

This paper reports the association between firms' internal corporate governance mechanisms and their auditor switch decisions in the Chinese context. We identify two types of auditor switch, namely switching to a larger auditor and switching to a smaller auditor. Three variables are used to proxy for firms' internal corporate governance mechanism, including the ownership concentration (shareholding by the largest owner), the effectiveness of supervisory board (SB), and the duality of chairman of board of directors (CBoD) and CEO. We regressed the internal corporate governance variables over firms' audit switching types during a specific period of 2001-2004 when a bear market continued in China. The empirical results demonstrate that firms with larger controlling owners or in which CBoD and CEO are held by the same person are more likely to switch to a smaller auditor rather than to a larger one. However, the effect of the SB variable does not have a significant impact on auditor switching decisions. In general, the study findings suggest that firms with weak internal corporate governance mechanism tend to switch to smaller or more pliable auditors in order to sustain the opaqueness gains derived from weak corporate governance. On the other hand, with the improvement of corporate government, firms should be more likely to choose large (high-quality) auditors in making auditor switching decisions.     

The Impact of Consulting Services on Audit Quality: An Experimental Approach

We use experimental markets to examine whether providing consulting services to a non‐audit client impacts audit quality. Our paper directly addresses concerns raised by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board that the largest public accounting firms’ growth in their consulting practices threatens audit quality. We conduct an experiment proposed using a registration‐based editorial process. We compare a baseline where the auditor does not provide consulting services to conditions where auditors provide consulting to audit clients or where auditors only provide consulting services to non‐audit clients. Our unique design provides evidence on whether providing consulting to non‐audit clients strengthens the salience of a client‐cooperative social norm that reduces audit quality. We do not find differences in audit quality by condition in our planned analysis, however we find greater variation in audit quality in the conditions where auditors provide consulting services compared to the baseline. In unplanned analyses, our results suggest providing consulting services increases auditor cooperation with managers, increasing audit quality when managers prefer high audit quality and decreasing audit quality when managers prefer low audit quality.     

Adoption and content of key audit matters and stock price crash risk

We examine whether the mandate for auditors to report key audit matters (KAMs) affects firm-specific stock price crash risk in China. Auditors in China are required to issue an expanded audit report that contains KAMs for AH-share firms, effective on January 1, 2017 (applicable to the financial year 2016), and for A-share firms, effective on January 1, 2018 (applicable to the financial year 2017). Applying a staggered difference-in-differences (D-i-D) design on a sample of 18,751 observations for financial years 2012–2019, we find that auditor reporting of KAMs is not significantly associated with stock price crash risk. The mechanism tests show that the disclosure of KAMs does not reduce information opaqueness and managerial opportunistic behaviors. Furthermore, our findings are not sensitive, but are robust to firms' corporate governance, product market competition, ownership structure, and auditor size. Overall, our study informs regulators, investors, auditors, and other stakeholders interested in the economic consequences of mandating KAM disclosures.     

Do changes in audit actions and attitudes consistent with increased auditor scepticism deter aggressive earnings management? An experimental investigation

Audits are claimed to not only enhance the detection of fraud but also the deterrence of fraud. This study examines whether different audit procedures and attitudes conveyed to management deter aggressive earnings management that may be fraudulent, and whether such different procedures and attitudes conveyed influence managers’ perceptions about the ethicality of any anticipated earnings management. In an experiment with 171 senior corporate managers, we find that compared to the condition where the audit proceeds the same as last year, managers anticipate that there would be less earnings management when the nature of evidence collected has increased probative value; and when the auditor conveys a more sceptical attitude via more critical inquiry combined with either an increase in the evidence extent (increased sample size) or the nature of the evidence. However, this reduction in anticipated earnings management is not found with either the increased extent of evidence collected alone or more critical inquiry alone, suggesting that a combination of action and attitude changes compared to a change in either action alone or attitude alone better signals to managers the heightened scepticism that enhances the effectiveness of auditor deterrence. We also find, after controlling for the underlying ethical disposition of managers, that the different audit procedures and attitudes conveyed to management affect managers’ perceptions of the ethicality of anticipated earnings management. Interestingly, the conditions that engender greater earnings management also paradoxically increase managers’ perceived unethicality of the anticipated earnings management. Together these findings have implications for how different changes in audit approaches may result in differential managerial responses about their intention to commit fraud and its appropriateness. This study is one of the first papers to provide experimental empirical evidence that specific audit actions conveying heightened scepticism have significant influence on managerial judgments and behaviours with respect to committing aggressive earnings management.     

Does Ethical Culture in Audit Firms Support Auditor Objectivity?

The suggested cause of constrained auditor objectivity has been centred on auditors' financial incentives and long audit tenure. Recent research has challenged those assumptions and questioned the effectiveness of auditor rotation to counteract short-tenure threats to auditor objectivity. Audit firms and regulators need to adopt methods for enhancing auditor objectivity that are effective in various auditor–client relationships. This study examines whether audit firm ethical culture is positively related to auditor objectivity. Based on the responses of 281 practising auditors, the findings indicate that auditors are more likely to make objective judgments in ethical cultures characterized by the rewarding of ethical behaviour and punishment of unethical behaviour, prevalence of ethical norms, visible ethical leadership, and low emphasis on obedience to authority. In conclusion, evidence indicates that auditors in audit firms with a strong ethical culture are more likely to maintain auditor objectivity than are auditors in less supportive cultures. This suggests that audit firms should promote a strong ethical culture to reduce the risk of constrained auditor judgment.     

Shared auditors,social trust,and relationship-specific investment in the supply chain

An auditor common to a supplier and customer may serve an information role, reduce information asymmetry, or mitigate a potential hold-up problem in the supply chain. The information role of shared auditors could be more important in a lax institutional environment where a lack of trust exists between the supplier and customer. Using a sample of listed firms in China from 2009 to 2015, we find that (1) a shared auditor enhances the supplier’s relationship-specific investment (RSI), and (2) this positive association is stronger when the customer is located in a region with lower trust. We also document an incremental effect of a shared audit partner on enhancing the supplier’s RSI in addition to the effect of a shared auditor at the audit firm level. Additional analyses suggest that a shared auditor alleviates information asymmetry between the supplier and customer and hence improves the supplier’s RSI. A shared auditor particularly improves the supplier’s RSI when the customer is limited in its legal protection, which validates the usefulness of this unique research setting (China) for studying the information role of shared auditors. By extending the research on shared auditors and social trust, this paper provides a reference for companies that wish to explore the role of auditors in enhancing RSI in the supply chain.     

Corporate fraud and the audit expectations gap: A study among business managers

This paper presents the findings of an empirical study on the audit expectations gap concerning the role of the auditor in corporate fraud cases. The purpose of the study is to assess the significance of a reasonableness gap, a deficient performance gap and a deficient standards gap in the specific context of corporate fraud. In order to distinguish all three elements of the expectations gap, respondents need a certain level of expertise on fraud. Therefore, in this research the audit expectations gap is studied primarily from the perspective of three groups of business managers, based on the fact that they typically have a special responsibility in fraud cases. Bankers are used as a control group to assess the potential differences between the views of business managers and ‘society in general’. This study provides clear evidence of a substantial audit expectations gap in the context of fraud, both with respect to the auditor's performance as well as the auditor's formal obligations as laid down in existing standards. However, compared to bankers, business managers are less inclined to judge auditors’ performance of existing duties as inadequate, and see fewer points where auditing standards should be amended.     

Government and managerial influence on auditor switching under partial privatization

We investigate how auditor switching is affected by government influence, misalignment between type of auditor (government vs. private) and type of controlling shareholder (government vs. private), and misalignment between an incumbent auditor and imputed preferences of managers in a market characterized by continued substantial government ownership in listed entities. We exploit a natural policy and regulatory experiment in Iran that allows us to investigate what happens when previously government-owned entities are partially privatized as listed entities where, in many cases, the government retains significant ownership interests. At the same time, there were significant changes in the audit market, resulting in large increases in the number of private sector auditors competing for previously state-administered audits. We find the likelihood of auditor switches is strongly associated with measures of misalignment between type of auditor and type of controlling shareholder and auditor–managerial misalignment, but these associations are constrained by significant government influence. Exposing the constraining effect of significant government influence on auditor switching is an important contribution to our understanding of privatizations, government shareholder influence and auditor choice. These results have implications for policy development in other emerging and transition economies where privatization remains largely partial, and competition among private sector auditors is still emergent.     

Auditor Fees, Market Microstructure, and Firm Transparency

Abstract:  Auditors, as corporate insiders, have access to private information regarding the firm's financial and business opacity that is unavailable to outside investors. We test whether auditors price their knowledge of firm opacity in their audit fees by examining two competing hypotheses. The first states that higher audit fees may reflect the greater risk that the auditor faces in auditing an opaque firm. Under this hypothesis, market based measures of opacity will be positively correlated with higher fees. The second hypothesis states that firms buy reputational capital from their auditor by paying high fees in an attempt to improve the market's perception of the firm's transparency. In this case, higher audit fees are negatively correlated with market based measures of opacity. Our results are consistent with the first hypothesis, that auditors price opacity risk into their fees.     

Company takeovers and the auditor choice decision

There is a growing literature on how companies select their auditors. This literature emphasizes both theoretical development and empirical testing. Anderson, Stokes, and Zimmer (1993) recently identified corporate takeovers as events that generate auditor selection decisions; the acquiring company (the acquirer) has to choose whether to retain the new subsidiary’s (the acquiree) incumbent auditor or switch to its own auditor. To date, this is the only reported study that examines auditor changes following corporate acquisitions. Anderson et al. (1993) speculated that if the business activities of the acquirer and the acquiree are different, then the acquiree’s incumbent auditor is more likely to be retained. They used takeover type (horizontal, vertical, conglomerate) as a proxy for differences in activities. Their empirical results, however, were contrary to these expectations.The purpose of this paper is to test the robustness of Anderson et al.’s findings in a different national setting (Britain instead of Australia). Further, it modifies Anderson et al.’s test procedures by introducing new variables that are also hypothesized to affect auditor choice in acquired companies. The results show that proxies for differences in activities between acquirers and acquirees, namely takeover type and industry, are associated with the retention of the acquiree’s incumbent auditor. The takeover type finding therefore differs from the findings of Anderson et al. (1993).Other factors associated with the decision to retain auditors include audit opinions, contested takeover bids, changes in top management, restructuring and integration of businesses, and relative audit fees. Some of these factors have also been identified in other, non-takeover contexts. Finally, audit switches to Big Eight firms are found to be more likely than switches away from the Big Eight.