會計師－審計客戶間相對協商力與審計意見之關係

The Influence of Auditor-client Relative Bargaining Power on Audit Report

陳慶隆(Ching-Lung Chen) ； 武季蔚(Chi-Wei Wu) ； 陳育成(Yu-Cheng Chen)

《輔仁管理評論》 14卷1期 (2007/01) Pp. 85-127

https://doi.org/10.29698/FJMR.200701.0005

摘要

審計程序的進行與審計產品的呈現深受會計師－審計客戶雙方談判協商力強度的影響；然談判協商力係潛在的變數，不易觀察與衡量。過去的研究多以審計客戶的規模大小或審計公費的高低作為衡量客戶重要性的指標，此種處理方式忽略會計師與審計客戶的談判協商力存在相互平衡的事實，亦即取決於兩者的相對談判協商力，而非絕對談判協商力。因此，本研究整理過去相關的研究及專家經驗，透過模糊推論方法導出適當的衡量談判協商力指標，並預期當會計師的談判協商力強度相對高時，其妥協獨立性的動機降低，對於高風險的審計客戶將越可能簽發非標準無保留審計意見。 實證的結果顯示：以模糊系統推導之會計師的談判協商力強度估計值，在控制影響審計意見簽發的相關變數後，顯著與會計師簽發非標準無保留審計報告正向變化。而且，在考慮會計師的相對談判協商力與審計客戶的風險變數的交互作用後，發現高談判協商力的會計師，對高風險的審計客戶會顯著簽發更多的非標準無保留審計意見，顯示會計師的談判協商力確實能反映其獨立性，進而影響其簽發適當的審計意見。

關鍵字

談判協商力 ； 模糊推論方法 ； 獨立性 ； 審計報告

並列摘要

The audit engagement is a contract between the auditor and the client, thus, the bargaining power adhered to these two players will play an important role in their ending products. Owing to the latent characteristics of bargaining power, recent studies attempt adopting firm size vs. audit fee to proxy client's bargaining power and indirectly examine the influences of client's size/audit fee on auditor's behavior. The present study is motivated to adopt the Fuzzy Inference Approach to develop an adequate model in explaining the balance of bargaining power measurement and examines the influence of this measurement on issuing non-standard unqualified audit reports. It is expected that the stronger the bargaining power with the auditors the lesser incentives to compromise independence, and therefore, issuing more non-standard unqualified audit reports to their high audit risk clients.
The empirical results show that the number of non-standard unqualified audit reports is significantly associated with the auditor's relative stronger bargaining power that is developed from the Fuzzy Inference Approach and agreeable to the hypothesis of Goldman & Barlev (1974). It is also observed from the interactive variable of bargaining power and client's risk measures that the stronger bargaining power auditor issues more non-standard unqualified audit reports to his/her high audit risk clients. Hence, although the pressures to violate professional rules of conduct are inherent in the client-auditor relationship, the auditor's ability to resist such pressure is positive associated with his/her bargaining power.

並列關鍵字

bargaining power, fuzzy inference approach, independence ； audit report

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