The effect of deadline imposed time pressure on audit quality: a case for restoring audit fieldwork completion timing

Do Big 4 Auditors Consistently Provide Better Audit Quality? Evidence from Government Audits

Improved audit quality is needed to increase investor’s confidence in a company's financial statements. Competence and independence are requirements to produce a quality audit. This study is a quantitative study that aimed to analyze the effect of audit tenure, time budget pressure, firm size, and auditor specialization on audit quality. The population and data in this study comprised banking companies listed in the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) in 2015-2019 and were obtained using the purposive sampling method. Earnings surprise benchmark was used as a measure of audit quality in this study with logistic regression analysis method as the analysis method. The results of the study indicated that audit tenure and time budget pressure did not provide an increase in audit quality. While the size of the company had an effect on the decline in audit quality significantly, the auditor specialization greatly improved audit quality. The implication of this research proves that to maintain audit quality, auditors must always maintain and improve their professional qualifications and plan more mature audits on audit work in larger companies.

The Validity of Publicly Available Measures of Audit Quality: Evidence from the PCAOB Inspection Data

Introduction: This study aims to reconcile conflicting empirical results from previous studies on the relationship between audit fees and audit quality. In addition, it investigated whether the contradictory findings were moderated by different types of audit fees and audit quality measures. The study also makes cross-country comparisons of empirical evidence to provide more insights. Methods: This study utilized meta-analysis to integrate the findings of previous studies on the relationship between audit fees and audit quality and further investigated moderators of the association. Results: The findings revealed that audit fees had a positive effect on audit quality. These results were observable for both developed and developing countries, indicating the beneficial consequences of audit fees on audit quality should not be overlooked. Furthermore, this study also found that the size of audit fees and quality moderated the positive influence of audit fees on the quality. Conclusion and suggestion: This study contributes to the stream of research investigating the relationship between audit fees and audit quality. To the best of our knowledge, this study represents one of the pioneering efforts to apply statistical meta-analysis to the issue addressed.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The Texas Education Agency (TEA) performs extensive reviews of audit working papers for selected Texas school district audits to evaluate the quality of audit services rendered by independent accountants. These reviews are referred to as Quality Control Reviews (QCRs). The TEA also conducts desk reviews of all audited financial statements issued by Texas independent school districts. During the desk review process, the TEA performs a limited check of the accuracy of financial statement amounts, completeness of financial disclosures, and existence of proper audit output. Prior research suggests that desk reviews and quality control reviews both measure audit quality (Colbert and O’Keefe 1995; Copley et al. 1994; Deis and Giroux 1992, 1996; Giroux et al. 1995; O’Keefe and Westort 1992; O’Keefe et al. 1994). The purpose of the paper is to determine if desk reviews capture the same audit quality information as quality control reviews. If so, regulators should focus resources on desk reviews since they are more timely and economical than QCRs. The results of the study, however, indicate that desk reviews and quality control reviews do not measure the same constructs. The findings suggest that desk reviews measure the industry specific knowledge of the auditor, which is only one aspect of audit quality. Moreover, it was observed that some audits passing the desk review were graded low in quality by the working paper review. This finding suggests that low audit quality may be more prevalent than generally suspected and that steps to improve audit quality and auditor credibility are warranted.<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"></strong></span></span></p>

Several committees, institutions, and practitioners are currently working on defining appropriate, and reliable Audit Quality Indicators (AQIs). The experiences the Foundation for Auditing Research (FAR) made with collecting audit quality data may inform the search for appropriate and reliable AQIs. In this paper I discuss different types of audit (quality) measures and their availability in the Netherlands. Furthermore, I discuss the (potential) information value, limitations, and recommendations for a wide range of audit quality measures and sources.

Audit Quality and Internal Control Weakness: Evidence from SOX 404 Disclosures

Investigating the effects of time pressure on new product development teams

High ownership concentration is a feature of publicly listed companies in Taiwan. Through concentrated ownership, major decision rights remain in the hands of controlling shareholders, thus, external auditors perform an important monitoring role in publicly listed companies. However, auditing activities of auditors may be under the pressure from clients, because accounting firms, as profit-making enterprises, need to maintain their clients. This paper examines the association between controlling shareholders and audit quality using a sample from Taiwanese companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange or GreTai Securities Market from 1996 to 2008. According to prior studies, the measure of audit quality is just beating (missing) earnings benchmarks. The empirical research finds that the greater board seat rights and divergence level between the board seat rights and cash flow rights, the more (less) likely the companies avoid reporting a loss and the lower (higher) audit quality is; the greater cash flow rights and board seat rights, the more (less) likely the companies avoid reporting a small decreases in earnings and the lower (higher) audit quality is. The conflicting evidence suggests that the controlling shareholders have ability and are more likely to affect audit quality in key moments.

The dependent variable in the form of audit delay has a general definition as a delay in the submission and presentation of the company’s financial statements, starting from the closing date of the book per period until the date of audit report is issued. This study aims to analyze the factors that can affect audit delay, specifically accounting complexity and audit quality. Accounting complexity is measured based on the number of subsidiaries owned, while audit quality is measured based on the category of an external auditors used by the company. Three other control variables used in this study are total assets, return on assets, and debt to equity ratio. The sources of data used in this study are all of manufacturing companies listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange for the periode 2019 until 2020. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that accounting complexity have an effect on audit delay and audit quality does not have an effect on audit delay.

This study investigates Arthur Andersen’s audit quality in the decade before the collapse of Enron. Andersen’s involvement in the Waste Management audit failures — which relate to audits of the company’s 1992- 1996 financial statements — led the SEC to accuse Andersen of issuing false and misleading audit reports and resulted in a permanent injunction that prohibited Andersen from further violation of securities laws. We examine whether the Waste Management audit failures were symptomatic of widespread audit deficiencies at Andersen. Using three empirical measures of audit quality — discretionary accruals, clients’ propensity to meet or just beat analyst forecasts, and accounting misconduct identified by Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) — we find no overall evidence suggesting lower average audit quality at Andersen relative to the Big 4 during the period 1992-2001 for a sample of S&P 1500 firms. Focusing on high litigation risk firms, however, we find larger absolute and income-increasing accruals and a greater propensity to meet or just beat analyst forecasts for Andersen clients relative to the Big 4 clients in the period August 7, 2000 to December 31, 2001, after Andersen’s divorce from Andersen Consulting. These findings provide some evidence that, after the divorce, Andersen was not able to constrain aggressive accounting where it may have mattered most, that is, among its clients with the highest litigation risk.

Do Measures of Audit Quality Really Measure Audit Quality? Evidence From the Banking Industry

This study aimed to examine the effect of auditor tenure in artificial rotation on audit quality. Tenure shows the relationship between the audit firms and a client that is measured in years. Artificial rotation of auditor (audit firm) indicates a condition that, conceptually, there has been a change of auditors leading to the auditor relationship with the client to be disconnected, whereas substantive auditor-client relationship is ongoing. Formally, the auditor does not violate the rules and is still able to audit for the same client. Yet, in the long-term, it could affect the audit quality. The longer auditor tenure, the closer auditor-client relationship is. Thus, the auditor accommodates the interests of the client at the client's financial statements, including the practice of discretionary accruals as a proxy for audit quality. The samples were selected by purposive sampling method of the companies listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange from the year 2002-2010, with multiple linear regression approach. It shows that tenure, and total assets do not affect the quality of the audit while the size of the audit firm, and debt statistically have significant effect on audit quality. Future studies may extend the period of observation, and using other audit quality measures, such as fraud, and the propensity of auditor to issue going concern opinion..

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of competence, independence, time pressure, and ethics of auditors on the quality of audit. This research is expected to improve the quality of audit conducted by an auditor who has the competence and independence. The population used in this research are auditors who work in the public accountant office in jakarta of which is there are as many as 171 of respondents. This study used multiple regression analysis. The results of this study are (1) The competence has significant effect on the quality of audit, (2) The independence has significant effect on the quality of audit, (3) The time pressure has significant effect on the quality of audit, and (4) The ethics has significant effect on the quality of audit. The implication of this research for institution that is public accountant office as an evaluation on upon the performance of auditors to increase the competence, independence, time pressure, and ethics of auditors to produce a good quality of audit in terms of the disclosure of the financial statements and can help investors and other parties concerned to avoid the possibility of fraud by those who use the audit results.

Synopsis The research problem Adding to the literature in auditing, this study examines whether there is an association between the religious beliefs of audit partners and audit quality in Taiwan. Motivation Previous studies have found that firms headquartered in areas with strong religious social norms are associated with higher audit quality. However, prior studies measured religiosity in terms of whether the audit practice offices were in more religious metropolitan statistical areas. No work had examined whether the religious beliefs of the individual auditors affect auditor decision making. In addition, prior studies using US data were mainly confined to one group who are, in the main, Christians. We examined this issue in Taiwan where the auditors come from three main religious groups: Christian, Buddhist, and Taoist. This setting provides another cultural environment for understanding the links between religiosity and financial reporting issues. The test hypotheses H1: Audit engagement partners with a religious belief are associated with higher audit quality. H2: The positive association between auditors’ religion and audit quality is more pronounced for auditors with industry specialization than auditors without specialization. Target population Various stakeholders include investors, auditors, financial analysts, and users of financial reports. Adopted methodology Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and logistics regression. Analyses We conducted the study in Taiwan where audit partners are required to sign audit reports. We obtained data on the religious beliefs of auditors by distributing a questionnaire to individual auditors in the Big 4 in Taiwan. We used four measures of audit quality: (a) discretionary accruals, (b) accrual estimation errors, (c) the probability of a client meeting an earnings benchmark, and (d) the propensity to issue modified audit opinions. We tested whether there is a positive association between auditors’ religious beliefs and audit quality. Findings Our study finds that firms with an audit partner who professes a religion are associated with higher audit quality. However, unlike evidence from the United States, we do not find that auditors in an area with strong religious social norms exhibit better audit quality than auditors in less religious areas when the audit partner’s religious belief is controlled in the analysis. The results suggest that auditor quality is more affected by auditor’s personal characteristics than the social norms. We also find that the positive association between auditors with industry specialization and audit quality is stronger when the auditor has religious beliefs. The results suggest that ethics and competence are complements to each other.