Processes of auditability in sustainability assurance – the case of materiality construction

This study examines how financial audit-styled concepts such as materiality are transferred to non-financial audit arenas. Drawing on a case study of assurors working within a Big 4 professional services firm, we uncover a number of interrelated features of the materiality determination and assessment process within sustainability assurance (assurance on sustainability reports). We illustrate how assuror flexibility, underpinned by assuror intuition, is central to uncovering assurance technologies deemed capable of addressing the materiality of ambiguous sustainability data. Assurors with no financial audit background retrospectively rationalise their intuition using the assumed authority of structured financial audit methodologies. This facilitates the tentative translation of financial audit knowledge to the sustainability assurance domain. Collaborative, holistic decision-making processes inform the assurors’ continual construction of materiality and are characterised by alliances of (accountant and non-accountant) ‘expert’ assurors merging formal and tacit knowledge. These alliances seek social cohesion within sustainability assurance teams in order to establish a social consensus among assurors around the materiality determination and assessment process. Our analysis develops and extends Power’s theorisation of how new areas are made auditable and advances our understanding of the more practical aspects of non-financial assurance services offered by Big 4 professional services firms.     

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Sustainability Disclosure: Findings from a Recent SASB Study

Early research into the relationship between corporate sustainability programs and financial performance suggests a positive relationship between strong sustainability performance and a lower cost of capital. As investors increasingly incorporate sustainability information into financial decisionmaking, the importance of high‐quality sustainability disclosure is growing. Just as investors have relied on financial disclosures based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to assess corporate risk, a market standard is needed to help companies disclose comparable sustainability information. To address this issue, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) conducted a recent analysis of the current state of sustainability disclosure in annual Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. The study reviewed the disclosures of over 700 U.S.‐and foreign‐domiciled companies, focusing on material sustainability topics as identified by SASB's industry‐specific accounting standards. The authors find large variations among different corporate sectors in the frequency and quality, as well as the focus, of their sustainability disclosures. Then, after examining in detail disclosures within the SASB Resource Transformation and Consumer Staples sectors, the authors suggest a number of possible drivers of this variation, including key sustainability and economic trends, while also presenting evidence of increasing investor interest in sustainability information. Although the authors' analysis was not intended to determine the extent to which the quality of sustainability disclosure affects investor returns, the findings provide a useful baseline for the as yet largely unexplored relationship between sustainability disclosure and corporate financial performance.     

Corporate Disclosure of Material Information: The Evolution—and the Need to Evolve Again

This article by the former chairman of the FASB and the founder and executive director of the new Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) presents the rationale for and mission of the SASB. As the authors point out, both the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was created in 1934, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board, set up in 1973, emerged during times of low investor confidence to restore trust in the capital markets. And the institutional changes brought about by the creation of both the SEC and the FASB succeeded in eliciting new information for investors and in raising the standards by which such information was reported. But as the authors go on to argue, we now live in a different world, one in which the management of environmental, social, and governance issues is increasingly viewed as critical to the long‐run value creation of companies. And because today's corporate reporting fails to account in a systematic way for material non‐financial issues, it's time once again for the capital markets to evolve. The SASB aims to meet this need by creating sustainability accounting standards for use by public companies in disclosing a minimum set of material sustainability impacts for companies in over 80 different industries. As part of a natural evolution in disclosure, the SASB aims to achieve the same goal the SEC and FASB started with: to protect investors and the public.     

Alternative work arrangements and perceived career success: Current evidence from the big four firms in the US

This study examines the influences of alternative work arrangements (AWAs), subordinate gender, and supervisor attitudes and beliefs regarding AWAs on performance evaluation judgments in public accounting. One hundred and forty-two experienced professionals from two US Big Four firms evaluated a hypothetical subordinate’s performance in an experimental setting. Results indicated that subordinate gender and AWA participation were significantly related to supervisors’ perceptions of the subordinate’s career success. We also found that individual differences in supervisors’ attitudes and beliefs regarding AWAs were systematically related to their performance evaluation judgments, and indicate that cultural support for AWAs is not uniform among experienced Big Four professionals. Further, the association between these attitudes and beliefs and performance evaluation judgments are consistent with an organizational justice interpretation of AWA use. Implications of these results for the Big Four’s work-life balance initiatives in the US are discussed.     

Incorporating big data in audits: Identifying inhibitors and a research agenda to address those inhibitors

With corporate investment in Big Data of $34 billion in 2013 growing to $232 billion through 2016 (Gartner 2012), the Big 4 accounting firms are aiming to be at the forefront of Big Data implementations. Notably, they see Big Data as an increasingly essential part of their assurance practice. We argue that while there is a place for Big Data in auditing, its application to auditing is less clear than it is in the other fields, such as marketing and medical research. The objectives of this paper are to: (1) provide a discussion of both the inhibitors of incorporating Big Data into financial statement audits; and (3) present a research agenda to identify approaches to ameliorate those inhibitors.     

Greenhouse Gas and Energy Audits under the Newly Legislated Australian Audit Determination: Perceptions of Initial Impact

This exploratory qualitative study, using interview data, provides perceptions of the preliminary impact of greenhouse gas and energy (GGE) audits in Australia within the context of the legislated Audit Determination, operational for the first time in the financial year ending 30 June 2010. Overall, the results suggest that the Australian Government's argued cost reductions are currently not being realised, and provide evidence of the accounting profession's perceived influence on the views and methodologies adopted in the Audit Determination. The results also indicate that accounting firms are perceived to be gaining an increasing share of the evolving GGE and broader sustainability assurance markets in Australia.     

An analysis of Key Issues arising from Professor A. J. Briloff’s Paper entitled, “Garbage In/Garbage Out: A Critique of Fraudulent Financial Reporting: 1987–1997 (The COSO Report, 1999) The SEC Accounting Regulatory Process (AAERs)"

This paper examines the COSO Report (1999) in light of concerns raised by Professor Briloff in his critique (Briloff, 2001). I identify a number of limitations of using AAERs in research including the possibility that these releases reflect prevailing SEC agendas and therefore may not be representative of the population of financial statement frauds. I also question the sampling process used in the COSO Report which does not appear to capture many of the “high-profile" frauds of recent years. I evaluate three possible explanations for why Big 5 CPA firms are under-represented in the fraud sample used in that report: differences in audit quality; self-selection by the large audit firms away from risky firms; and the considerable financial resources of Big 5 firms discouraging the SEC from prosecuting them in all but the most blatant audit abuses for inadequacies. Following on from Professor Briloff’s remarks and earlier research, I also explore the broader issue of auditor independence.     

中国内资会计师事务所合并效果研究——基于国际“四大”审计收费溢价的分析

近年来,我国注册会计师行业管理部门颁布了一系列政策法规,大力鼓励内资事务所进行合并以实现行业做大做强的目的。本文比较分析了2002-2008年内资事务所和"四大"审计收费情况,发现经历第一轮合并浪潮后审计收费溢价仍在不断增加。针对这一现象,我们深入挖掘了其内在原因,总结了经验教训,并结合相关部门2009年以来一系列最新措施,对已经拉开帷幕的新一轮的内资事务所合并提出了对策建议。     

Politician Careers and SEC enforcement against financial misconduct

We document that corporate financial misconduct has significant consequences for politicians' election outcomes and, in particular, those politicians that serve on U.S. congressional committees with SEC-relevant oversight responsibilities (“SEC-relevant politicians”). These politicians display a 31% greater likelihood of losing a reelection campaign after a local firm faces SEC enforcement for financial misconduct. We also document that SEC-relevant politicians appear to influence the SEC to limit career effects due to the potential consequences from enforcement against local firms. First, the timing of enforcement action announcements around SEC-relevant politicians' elections appears opportunistic. Second, firms in the districts of SEC-relevant politicians are less likely to receive SEC enforcement actions relative to other firms and, when faced with enforcement, receive smaller penalties. Collectively, these results suggest that politicians' career concerns impede the SEC's enforcement efforts.     

Has the new world order taught the big four to manage client portfolio risk? Examining extreme loss occurrences before and after Sarbanes Oxley

This paper analyzes ongoing efforts by the large public accounting firms to manage their legal liability. For this purpose, the paper focuses on extreme financial losses from the audits of U.S. publicly traded clients incurred by Big Four firms. The possibility that this form of legal liability has changed as a result of the new world order brought to the accounting profession by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is the paper's main premise. This paper finds a major decline in the severity of these cases. However, the results show that firms have not necessarily improved the management of this risk. The drivers of extreme legal liability continue to be client continuance decisions and larger clients.     

Measuring What Matters: Industry Specificity Helps Companies and Investors Gain Traction on Sustainability

Financial analysts interpret the performance of companies and their securities through an industry lens. Just as an industry approach is critical in financial analysis, it's also critical in helping investors evaluate sustainability performance, since sustainability issues differ from one industry to the next—in large because of differences in how companies use natural and other social resources when bringing their goods and services to market, and how they impact society and the environment in the process. The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) was created in 2012 to deliver a full set of sustainability accounting standards that can be used to guide industry‐specific corporate sustainability disclosure to the capital markets. SASB has now issued provisional standards for 79 industries, thereby enabling companies and investors for the first time to identify patterns of sustainability risks and opportunities both across and within industries. Although high‐level issues such as climate change, product safety, and resource intensity and scarcity have material impacts across a variety of sectors, those impacts often vary greatly from one industry to the next. Thus, although the risk may be ubiquitous, it is also differentiated to the point that each industry has its own distinct sustainability profile. Understanding these unique profiles can help companies better manage the issues that are most likely to present material risks to their industries.     

Keeping Watch! Recounting Twenty-Five Years of the Office of Chief Accountant, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 1976–2001

This article adds to the literature of accounting regulation by providing background, including facts and circumstances relating to a quarter century of SEC activity preceding the events identified with the reshaping of the capital markets following the dot.com collapse and the attack on the World Trade Center, 11 September 2001. The subsequent collapse of Enron, the bankruptcy of Worldcom, the dissolution of Andersen, one of the Big Five accounting firms, and the passage in the United States of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, collectively have ushered in a new era of public–private capital market relationships. This study provides guidance and outlines topics useful to future researchers undertaking assessments of regulatory policies and the individuals involved in their administration.
From 1976 to 2001 five individuals played a significant role in the development of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's disclosure and reporting practices by virtue of their office and the collective influence of their views. A. Clarence Sampson (1976–87), Edmund Coulson (1988–91), Walter P. Schuetze (1992–95), Michael H. Sutton (1995–98) and Lynn E. Turner (1998–2001) directed accounting policy activities at the SEC during these years.     

Do the SEC's enforcement preferences affect corporate misconduct?

Recent frauds have questioned the efficacy of the SEC's enforcement program. We hypothesize that differences in firms' information sets about SEC enforcement and constraints facing the SEC affect firms' proclivity to adopt aggressive accounting practices. We find that firms located closer to the SEC and in areas with greater past SEC enforcement activity, both proxies for firms' information about SEC enforcement, are less likely to restate their financial statements. Consistent with the resource-constrained SEC view, the SEC is more likely to investigate firms located closer to its offices. Our results suggest that regulation is most effective when it is local.     

Mutual supervision or conspiracy? The incentive effect of multiple large shareholders on audit quality requirements

Multiple large shareholders may choose to mutual supervise or conspire, thereby affecting the firm's strategy and transactional operations. This paper examines the impact of firms with multiple large shareholders on demand for high-quality audits. Compared with firms with a single large shareholder, firms with multiple large shareholders increase audit cost and increase the probability of hiring a Big Four accounting firm. After a series of robustness checks, this result holds. Furthermore, we find that the shareholding ratio of the largest shareholder tends to increase audit cost and increase the probability of hiring the Big Four. The absolute controlling and non-controlling shareholders tend to increase audit cost and increase the probability of hiring the Big Four. The state-owned firms and large firms with multiple large shareholders tend to increase audit cost and increase the probability of hiring the Big Four. This paper helps to enrich the research on external audit supervision and moral hazard research from the perspective of ownership structure.     

Corporate social responsibility committees and the use of corporate social responsibility assurance services

This study examines whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) committees associate with the external assurance of CSR reports. Specifically, we consider the presence and effectiveness of CSR committees. Using a sample of Australian firms over the period 2004–2016, we show the mere presence of a CSR committee is not related to the external assurance of CSR. However, CSR committee effectiveness is positively related. In addition, firms with higher CSR committee effectiveness are more likely to seek external assurance provided by the Big4 accountancy firms and acquire financial audit and CSR assurance services from the same provider. Taken together, CSR committee effectiveness plays an active role in CSR assurance services. Our results are particularly relevant to those with interests in understanding the demand and choice of external CSR assurance services, as well as the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on these services.     

Conservatism,SEC investigation,and fraud

We present evidence on the relationship between firms that have engaged in fraudulent financial reporting and accounting conservatism. We empirically investigate the extent to which US firms identified by the SEC in their Enforcement Releases demonstrate higher levels of conditional conservatism in order to mitigate information asymmetry and agency problems. Specifically, by assessing the timing of changes in the litigation risk environment for fraud firms, we document how differences in heightened legal liability guide changes in conservative accounting behavior. Compared to a matched non-fraud control sample, we document that fraud firms have significantly lower levels of accounting conservatism in the pre-fraud period. Consistent with changes in potential legal liability, we find an increase in accounting conservatism for fraud firms during the SEC investigation period. Subsequently, during the public discovery of fraud, any increases in accounting conservatism are marginal and appear to converge back to lower levels compared to the SEC investigation period. Overall, our findings suggest more temporary changes in conservative reporting in the short-term for fraud firms. We also document that increased levels of accounting conservatism for fraud firms are not due solely to the passage of the SOX Act. Our findings aid in explaining fraud firms’ incentives and opportunities for accounting conservatism and lend support for why standard setters, regulators and auditors should continue to monitor and re-evaluate conservatism’s short-term effects that are conditioned on changes in a firm’s risk environment.     

Determinants and consequences of voluntary switches to Chinese auditors in Hong Kong

Hong Kong market regulators have permitted 12 large Chinese accounting firms to audit the financial statements of Chinese firms that cross list in Hong Kong (i.e., H-share firms) since 2010. This paper examines the characteristics of H-share firms that voluntarily replaced their Hong Kong (HK) auditors with Chinese auditors, and the market reaction to auditor switches following this policy. We find that 38 out of 147 H-share firms voluntarily switched to Chinese auditors during 2011–2013. Switching firms are larger in size and are less likely to use Big4; they also have less need for external financing, a longer cross listing history, and a lower percentage of foreign revenue. We also find that investors negatively react to the auditor switches from HK non-Big4 to China non-Big4, but do not react to the auditor switches from HK Big4 to China Big4. This suggests that investors perceived lower audit quality for China non-Big4.