دانلود رایگان مقاله پشتکار کمیته حسابرسی پیرامون تعامل حسابرسی اولیه

Abstract

Studies focusing on governance mechanisms argue that auditor monitoring is one of several governance mechanisms that exist in the firm, and these mechanisms supplement each other. Extending this argument, I examine whether firms support auditor monitoring with audit committee monitoring when auditor oversight is deemed to be weak. Prior auditing literature argues that audit quality is affected by auditors' lack of familiarity with their clients' activities. Since lack of auditor–client familiarity exists in the first year of auditor–client tenure, I examine whether firms increase their audit committee monitoring during the year of auditor change. For a sample of firms that changed auditors between 2006 and 2012, the findings show that audit committees meet more frequently in the first year of audit engagement. Further tests show that firms' past reporting behavior play a significant role in the demand for more audit committee meetings and the increase in the audit committee meetings in the initial year of auditor engagement positively affects reporting quality.

7. Conclusion

Auditor monitoring provides assurance to the financial statement users about the reliability of reported earnings. However auditor's monitoring is not always uniform and is affected by auditor's lack of familiarity of client's activities (Johnson et al., 2002). Given the fact that audit function in concert with other financial reporting governance mechanism (Ahmed et al., 2008), I examine whether firms supplement periods of weak audit quality with an increased number of audit committee meetings, a governance mechanism argued to support auditor monitoring. In particular, I examine whether the firms increase their audit committeemeetings in the initial year of auditor engagement. Like auditors, audit committees are knowledgeable about financial reporting and are held responsible for the monitoring of the financial reports (Srinivasan, 2005). Furthermore prior studies document that audit committees with diligent monitoring reduce the incidence of reporting failure (Abbott et al., 2004) and the demand for auditor assurance of reporting quality (Stewart & Munro, 2007). Since the auditors' familiarity of client's activities is minimum in the initial year of auditor engagement, there is a higher chance of reporting failure. Thus the initial year of auditor engagement provides me with a setting to examine the interplay between audit committee and auditor monitoring.