管理者特征如何影响企业内部审计外包？——基于中国A股市场调查数据的研究

基于全部A股上市公司的问卷调查数据,探讨管理者特征与企业内部审计外包的关系,结果发现董事长越规避风险、内审负责人的组织认同度越高,企业越可能选择内部审计外包,而总经理的风险偏好、内审负责人年龄对内部审计外包决策影响较弱。进一步的研究表明,董事长风险偏好、内审负责人的组织认同与内部审计外包之间的作用关系主要存在于非国有企业或重视内审职能的企业,仅当企业内部控制较差时,董事长越规避风险,企业越可能外包内部审计,而企业内部控制较好时内审负责人年龄和组织认同更能显著影响外包决策。     

论近代中国独立型审计制度及其历史启示

审计独立是近代中国审计立法和审计制度构建的主要原则,但近代中国的审计制度并未真正实现独立。清末新政筹设独立审计机关是为牵制内阁、巩固皇权;民国北京政府时期的审计处隶属于行政机关,此后的审计院为大总统控制,皆非独立;国民政府时期,审计的独立性有所加强,但在国民党独裁专政之下,审计机关的独立性相对有限。近代中国独立型审计制度及其实践表明,审计制度效能的发挥需要良好政治体制的支撑以及完备财政制度的配合,应赋予审计机关强有力的监督手段,并给予审计人员以特殊的职务保障。     

基于国家治理现代化视角的自然资源资产离任审计研究

在领导干部自然资源资产离任审计现代化过程中,存在审计汲取能力不足、缺乏审计共识、制度建构不健全、公民参与不足和组织体制内部权责不明等问题.推进自然资源资产离任审计现代化,关键是要结合现存问题与风险,从制度化、民主化、高效化和协调化等方面完善审计体系和提高审计能力.     

资本市场虚假审计报告民事责任问题研究

虚假审计报告事件在我国屡屡发生,而在实务中,注册会计师几乎不会因之作出民事赔偿。这种情况严重限制了注册会计师行业的发展。分析我国注册会计师民事责任法律制度的特点及审计民事索赔程序,探讨其所涉及的注册会计师过错认定、审计报告使用者的范围及民事责任的内容、注册会计师应承担的民事责任程度等关键问题。在已有研究的基础上,对推定过错原则的适用性、区分审计报告使用者的类型以分别确定违约责任和侵权责任,以及分别追究被审计单位和注册会计师民事责任等问题进行了研究。     

Democratic Accountability During Performance Audits Under Pressure: A Recipe for Institutional Hypocrisy?

This study shows how the tensions between transparency and secrecy are likely to engender ‘institutional hypocrisy’ in the accountability process taking place during Supreme Audit Institutions’ performance audits. The examination of relations between the French Cour des comptes, Administration and Parliament has revealed gaps between Administration and Parliamentarians’ discourse and action, secrets and things left unsaid. This impression of Administration and Parliamentarians’ full participation in this democratic process may give to citizens a false sense of security leading them to believe that accounts are indeed rendered, which is not actually the case. Rather, the appearances of functional democracy have been preserved.     

Formal Participation in the EFRAG’s Consultation Processes: The Role of European National Standard-Setters

While the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) considers European national standard-setters (NSSs) as close partners that play a vital role in its legitimacy, empirical evidence on EFRAG’s consultation processes and the involvement of NSSs therein remains scarce. We use a multi-issue/multi-period approach to investigate the formal participation in EFRAG’s consultation processes. By examining 2,102 comment letters submitted to EFRAG in the 2002–2015 period, we find that NSSs typically outweigh other stakeholder groups in terms of level of participation across stages of the consultation process and project topics. Although NSSs’ level of participation is rather stable over time, it significantly varies across European countries. We also provide a recent classification of European NSSs and show that NSSs’ level of participation varies by their institutional status and is the highest for private NSSs. Our findings have implications for aspects of the legitimacy of both EFRAG and NSSs and shed light on the role of intermediaries in international accounting standard-setting.     

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.     

Do auditors constrain intertemporal income shifting in private companies?*

This study investigates the association between private company auditing and intertemporal income shifting. Using a large reduction in the Finnish corporate tax rate as a strong incentive for income shifting and financial statement data coupled with proprietary information from the tax authorities, we analyse accruals and cost stickiness of small private companies. Our results reveal significant differences in accrual income shifting between audited and unaudited companies, but only among companies that on average could anticipate the tax reduction the most. Further, we find auditors to restrict sticky selling, general, and administrative cost behaviour that we hypothesise is associated with illegal actions. Additional tests expose a nontrivial number of incorrectly unaudited companies which are the ones mostly associated with income shifting. Taken together, our study highlights the effects of audit exemption and the importance of enforcement while also suggesting that the audit process is value adding for the tax authorities.     

Do practitioner assessments agree with academic proxies for audit quality? Evidence from PCAOB and internal inspections

This study investigates the degree of concordance between fifteen measures of audit quality used in academia and two measures of audit process quality determined either by audit firms’ internal inspections or by Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspections of individual engagements. Using two confidential datasets of these assessments of audit process quality, I find that three of the measures of audit quality used by academics have significant associations with both measures of audit process deficiencies used by auditors and regulators: (i) the propensity to restate financial statements, (ii) the propensity to meet or beat the zero earnings threshold, and (iii) audit fees. Seven academic proxies are significantly associated with only one audit process quality measure, and five have insignificant associations with both practitioner assessments. Overall, the significant associations indicate that practitioners and academics share common ground in identifying low-quality audits. These findings can provide guidance for future studies in selecting audit-quality proxies suitable for different research questions.     

CEO compensation in relation to worker compensation across countries: The configurational impact of country‐level institutions

Executive compensation and its relation to that of rank and file employees are vital areas of strategy research. This study contributes to our understanding of cross‐national differences in executive compensation by exploring how key formal and informal country‐level institutions of social power structures combine to shape CEO and worker compensation across countries as well as the resulting pay dispersion. Analyzing data spanning 54 countries using the configurational approach fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), the study also explores the causal asymmetry underlying compensation outcomes by investigating institutional configurations linked to high CEO compensation, high worker pay, and high pay dispersion and those configurations linked to the absence of these outcomes. The article concludes by discussing the study's implications for theory and research on executive compensation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.