انتخاب حسابرسان در شرکت های خصوصی
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Theory and hypotheses
3- Data and methodology
4- Results
5- Conclusions
References
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to examine whether a private firm’s demand for a Big4 auditor is influenced by the auditor choice of its main supplier, customer and competitor. The authors rely on institutional theory to explain this stakeholders’ influence. The authors also examine whether the extent to which the firm’s board of directors engages in networking moderates this influence. Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaire data are combined with archival data of 210 Belgian private firms with a statutory audit requirement. Logistic regression analysis is applied to examine to what extent firms follow their main competitor, customer and supplier in hiring a Big4 auditor. Findings – The results reveal a positive association between the firm’s choice of a Big4 auditor and its main supplier being audited by a Big4 auditor, supporting the conformance effect (isomorphism) toward suppliers as hypothesized by institutional theory. The extent of board networking, however, seems to weaken this effect. Toward competitors, a divergence effect instead of a conformance effect is found, which indicates the existence of competitive differentiation regarding auditor choice. Research limitations/implications – While prior studies mainly focus on the agency relationships between shareholders, debtholders and managers to explain auditor choice, this study also takes into account the firm’s other main stakeholders by relying on institutional theory. Both the conformance effect toward suppliers as well as the divergence effect toward competitors provide interesting additional perspectives on why auditors are demanded, leading to interesting future research opportunities. Originality/value – This paper fulfills an identified need to consider additional theories in explaining audit outcomes.
Introduction
A large amount of studies already focused on auditor choice, which includes both the choice to hire an auditor voluntary (Dedman et al., 2014; Collis et al., 2004) and the choice to hire a high-quality auditor for firms with a statutory audit requirement (Firth and Smith, 1992; Piot, 2001; Lennox, 2005; Matonti et al., 2016). These studies mainly consider the shareholder–manager and shareholder–debtholder relationship to explain this choice. According to agency theory, auditing acts “[...] as a monitoring or bonding device dedicated to preventing and regulating conflicts of interests [...]” (Piot, 2005, p. 23) that can arise between the shareholders and managers and between the shareholders and debtholders of a company (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). Therefore, the higher the (potential) level of agency conflicts between shareholders and managers on the one hand and shareholders–debtholders on the other, the higher the demand for an (high quality) auditor.