分所业务增长与审计质量:基于事务所内部治理视角

Office Business Growth and Audit Quality:Based on the Audit Firm's Internal Governance Perspective

在我国会计师事务所“做大做强”的政策背景下,分所业务承接规模迅速扩张,但鲜有文献从分所治理视角考察其业务增长引致的审计质量问题。基于此,以2014—2018年我国A股上市公司为样本,实证检验分所业务增长与审计质量的关系,并进一步考察事务所内部治理对此的影响。结果表明:首先,分所业务增长与审计质量显著负相关,说明分所业务增长是以降低审计质量为代价的;其次,区分不同事务所类型后发现,分所业务增长与审计质量的负相关关系是由未执行一体化治理的事务所驱动的,证实了事务所内部治理的真实效应;进一步分析表明,在市场集中度高的地区以及小规模客户中,分所业务增长对审计质量的负面影响更为显著。结论有助于打开事务所内部治理的“黑箱”,在加强事务所监管、强化事务所内部治理方面具有重要启示意义。

Under the policy of“Being Bigger and Stronger”of audit firms in China,the scale of the office business has expanded rapidly.Based on this,this paper takes 2014—2018 China's A-share listed companies as a sample,empirically tests the relationship between the business growth of the office and audit quality,and further examines the impact of the audit firm's internal governance on this.The results show that:The growth of office business is significantly negatively correlated with audit quality,which indicates that the business growth of the office is at the expense of reducing the audit quality.Further analysis indicates these results are driven by the audit firms that have not performed the integrated governance.Moreover,declines in audit quality are more likely to occur in regions with high market concentration and among smaller clients.This paper contributes to the disclosure of the“black box”of the audit firm's internal governance,and it is of great significance to strengthen the supervision of the audit firm and strengthen the internal governance of the audit firm.