特殊普通合伙制、签字合伙人身份与审计质量

Special General Partnership, Auditor Partners and Audit Quality

会计师事务所的特殊普通合伙制改制,重点是提高了审计报告签字合伙人的法律责任和潜在诉讼风险,当审计报告签字人为非合伙人时,发生审计失败的法律责任仍无法真正落实,因此本文拟探索签字注册会计师身份是否为合伙人,对事务所转制的效果是否有影响。研究发现:事务所转为特殊普通合伙制后,签字注册会计师为合伙人时,对其所审计客户公司盈余操控行为的抑制作用更加明显,客户公司的会计稳健性也提高更多,这说明,事务所转制对签字合伙人和签字非合伙人的审计行为影响存在显著差异,事务所转制对签字合伙人的影响更大。

The transformation from limited liability to the special general partnership has a significant effect on partner auditors＇ reporting behavior. In particular, the transformation mainly increases partner auditors＇ legal liability and potential litigation risk, but for non-partner auditors, the legal liability may not really implement after the transformation. Therefore, this paper examines whether audit quality varies across partners and non-partner auditors. We find that clients＇ discretionary accruals of partner auditors are significantly reduced, as well as clients＇ accounting conservatism of partner auditors is significantly improved after the transformation. This indicates that there is a significant variation in audit quality across partners and non-partner auditors after the transformation. The effects that the transformation has on partner auditors＇ audit quality are both statistically significant and stronger than corresponding effects on non-partner auditors.