參考美國沙賓法案(Sarbanes-Oxley Act)之作法,自2007年起,我國證券交易法中明定審計委員會之規範,唯此並非強制要求設置之功能性委員會,且過去國內文獻多僅針對審計委員會成員的獨立性、專業性與盈餘管理的關聯性進行探討,以致於探討審計委員會之功能性時產生較模楜的結論。 本研究旨在探討我國為健全公司治理架構下所設置的審計委員會是否因其品質高低的不同,而對抑制公司盈餘管理的程度產生不同的影響?以期當公司為強化公司治理監督控管機制,而設置審計委員會時,能夠作為公司提升審計委員會品質的參考方向。樣本期間為2007至2010年,資料來源為公開資訊觀測站、公司年報及台灣經濟新報社之資料庫,以取得裁決性應計數、審計委員會資歷及控制變數之資料,並以審計委員會成員之資歷(擔任過其他公司CEO、兼任其他公司獨立董事)、專業性及審計委員會之規模作為審計委員會品質的4項特質,並綜合評分後成一品質指標作為審計委員會品質的替代變數,用以分析審計委員會品質與盈餘管理之關聯性。實證結果發現,公司的審計委員會品質愈高者,其盈餘管理的程度愈低,顯示二者呈現負相關,符合本研究所預期之結果。
Reference to the practice of the U.S. SOA 407, since 2007, our government has promulgated the rule of audit committee, but SEA did not compulsorily request companies to establish audit committee. Prior literatures that only have examined the relation between the function of audit committee and earnings management, which audit committee characteristics are measured by independence or professionalism, as a result of the conclusions are still mix. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the function of audit committee – a composite index is related to discretionary accruals – the proxy of earnings management. We expect our study results can have contributions to companies when they establish audit committee. We choose the data during 2007 to 2010, based on market observation post system, company annual report, and Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) database, and anticipate getting information relating to discretionary accruals, work experience of audit committee members, and other control variables. This study identifies four committee characteristics that could be related to the quality of audit committee which include CEO directors, additional directorships, committee size, and expertise. The composite indicator is sum of the quality scores of the individual characteristic for the firm. We use the composite indicator to measure the quality of audit committee and examine whether the composite indicator is related to earnings management by the firm. The empirical results show that the quality of audit committee and earnings management exist positive relationship, that is, the higher of the quality of audit committee, the less of earnings management.