會計師與經理人之間熟悉度對審計品質之關連性研究

Does long-term auditor and management’s collaboration tenure affect audit quality？Evidence from Taiwan.

王銘義(Ming-I Wang)

指導教授 ： 王全三

國立臺灣大學/管理學院/會計學研究所/碩士(2010年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU.2010.02692

摘要

本研究旨在探討存在於審計人員與受查者管理階層之間的熟悉度，是否會因長期的審計委任期間而損害審計品質。文獻中對長期審計委任期間最主要的關注點為¬，審計人員透過長時間的審計委任期間，和受查者管理階層之間產生密切的熟悉。而存在於審計人員與受查者管理階層之間密切的熟悉度，被市場參與者認為會使審計人員逐漸喪失專業上應有之懷疑，進而損害審計獨立性以及審計品質。藉由探討雙方之間的熟悉度是否影響審計品質，本研究可對長期審計期間是否影響審計品質提出進一步證據。
本研究藉由衡量會計師與受查者管理階層共同進行審計的期間視為兩者之間熟悉度的代理變數。同時本研究採用裁決性應計數做為審計品質的代理變數，並發現隨著共同合作期間增長，裁決性應計數顯著的減少。該結果顯示當會計師與受查者管理階層共同進行審計的期間越長，受查者的財務報表將存在較少的裁決性應計數。因此本研究並未發現證據支持，隨著審計委任期間增長，會計師與受查者管理階層越加熟悉會導致較低的審計品質。

關鍵字

審計任期 ； 審計品質 ； 熟悉度 ； 熟悉性威脅 ； 強制會計師輪調

並列摘要

This study investigates the relation between audit tenure and audit quality, focusing on the personal familiarity between auditor and client’s management. Prior studies concern that auditors will become more familiar with the management when audit tenure gets longer. Market participants concern this personal familiarity will further become “familiarity threat” to auditor independence and audit quality, since auditor might gradually lack professional skepticism on auditing. With this focusing on the familiarity between auditor and client’s management, I provide new evidences showing the opposite: Personal familiarity may not impair audit quality when audit tenure gets longer. Instead of using auditor tenure, I use the “overlapping working period” between audit partner and management, which is called auditor-management collaboration tenure, as a proxy for personal familiarity between two parties. Further, by using performance-adjusted discretionary accruals as a proxy for audit quality, I find that the discretionary accruals decrease significantly with auditor-management collaboration tenure. The results suggest that companies are less likely to record extreme discretionary accruals when collaboration tenure increases. Overall, these findings do not support the argument that personal familiarity in the long-term audit tenure will impair audit quality.

並列關鍵字

Audit tenure ； audit quality ； personal familiarity ； familiarity threat ； mandatory auditor rotation

參考文獻

AICPA (1992). Statement of Position Regarding Mandatory Rotation of Audit Firms of Publicly Held Companies.

AICPA (1997). "Serving the public interest: a new conceptual framework for auditor independence." NY, NY: American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Allen, M. (1981). "Managerial power and tenure in the large corporation." Social Forces 60(2): 482-494.

Antle, R. and B. Nalebuff (1991). "Conservatism and Auditor-Client Negotiations." Journal of Accounting Research 29: 31-54.

Bamber, E. and L. Bamber (2009). "Discussion of" Mandatory Audit Partner Rotation, Audit Quality, and Market Perception: Evidence from Taiwan"." Contemporary Accounting Research 26(2): 393-402.