环境不确定性、企业社会责任与审计收费

Environmental Uncertainty,Corporate Social Responsibility and Audit Fees

以每股社会贡献值为企业社会责任表现的代理变量,研究在环境不确定条件下企业社会责任与审计收费的关系。结果显示,企业的社会责任表现与审计收费显著正相关,原因是企业可能通过良好的社会责任表现以转移利益相关者视线从而掩饰其盈余管理等行为,而审计师将会针对性地实施更多的审计程序,并提高风险估价,因而导致审计收费提高。进一步研究发现,环境不确定性是上述两者关系的调节性影响因素,相对于环境不确定性较低的企业,环境不确定性较高企业的社会责任表现与审计收费的关系更为显著,这说明如果企业在面临较高的环境不确定性时仍然有着良好的社会责任表现,将存在更大的掩饰其盈余管理等行为的可能,从而导致审计师更大幅度地提高审计收费。

This paper made use of social contribution per share as the proxy variable for social responsibility per- formance to analyze the relationship between corporate social responsibility and audit fees under environmental un- certainty. The study showed that corporate social responsibility performance and audit fees were significant positively correlated. This was probably because enterprises might untilize good social responsibility performance to divert stakeholders＇ attention in the hope of achieving the purpose of concealing practices of earnings management. On the other hand, auditors were inclined to perform more targeted audits which would result in the rise in audit fees. Further study found that the environmental uncertainty was a regulatory factor in influencing the relationship between corporate social responsibility and audit fees. Comparing with the enterprises facing low environmental un- certainty, the relationship between corporate social responsibility performance and audit fees was more significant a- mong the enterprises facing higher environmental uncertainty. It showed that in the circumstances of higher environ- mental uncertainty, good social responsibility performance might be the sign of larger possibility that an enterprise was concealing practices of earnings management, which might lead to a more substantial increase in audit fees.