دانلود رایگان مقاله مذاکرات بین حسابرسان و مشتریان در مورد تنظیمات صورتهای مالی

Abstract

While financialstatements are the responsibility of management,they are ultimately a product of collaboration between management and their auditors–—likely involving negotiations over proposed audit adjustments. This installment of Accounting Matters discusses the implications of prior research in psychology and social psychology regarding negotiations as applied to the context of auditor-client management negotiations. Specifically, we consider recently published research by Hatfield and colleagues regarding how these auditor-client discussions may be influenced in unexpected ways if not viewed through the lens of negotiation. This research finds that explicit consideration of negotiation characteristics (e.g., whether the unaudited financial statement data is the ‘first offer’ of client management, whether negotiations have created reciprocity pressures for the current negotiation) can influence these auditor-client discussions in predictable ways. Understanding the unconscious biases resulting from these ‘negotiation rules’ is key for auditors to effectively translate audit quality into improved financial statement quality.

5. What have we learned?

The financialstatements are a result of collaboration between client management and their auditors, which often includes a negotiation process to resolve any differences in opinion about the content of the financial statements (Antle & Nalebuff, 1991). There has been a great deal of research regarding negotiations in the psychology and social psychology literature. Auditing research is catching up, and Hatfield and colleagues have conducted several studies looking at how we can expect these findings from the general negotiation literature to influence ACM negotiations. Even though auditors are somewhat peculiar negotiators, given their general lack of concession, they are nonetheless influenced by many of the characteristics identified in the general negotiation literature. For example, Hatfield et al. (2010) demonstrated that auditors rarely move off their initial recommendation to the client regarding an adjustment. However, their study also demonstrated that this initial recommendation is highly influenced by the magnitude of client position and the occurrence, or not, of a prior adjustment required by the auditor. Itisimportantthat auditors accessresearch, like that discussed here, to better prepare for ACM negotiations such that financial statement quality can be maximized. It is interesting to note that few audit partners receive training in negotiations; indeed, only 28% of the auditors in the study by Hatfield et al. (2010) received significant training in negotiations, and much of that was related to fee negotiations. Research has demonstrated that auditors can improve their negotiation outcomes if they explicitly consider their position as well as that of the client prior to entering discussions with their client (Trotman, Wright, & Wright, 2005). In general, auditors should heed the warnings of Gillan (2007) and Bazerman, Loewenstein, and Moore (2002) that many of the problems experienced by auditors in recent years cannot be resolved with regulations or penalties for unethical behavior, but rather only via explicit consideration of the unconscious biases that lead to suboptimal audit judgments.