Contemporary Values of Confucianism and the Effectiveness of Internal Control in Corporate Management:Compatibility between Management Culture and Systems in Chinese Enterprises

Based on data from China’s A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2017,this paper examines the influence of the contemporary values of Confucianism,namely benevolence,righteousness,propriety,wisdom,and fidelity on the effectiveness of internal control.It indicates a significant positive correlation between the contemporary values of Confucianism and the effectiveness of internal control.Furthermore,this positive influence is noticeable in family-owned businesses but is unobserved in foreign-invested enterprises in China.In addition,the contemporary values of Confucianism enhance internal control quality through two pathways:promotion incentives and corporate reputation.In regions with lower degrees of openness,lower levels of rule of law and slower marketization,or in companies facing operational crises,the contemporary values of Confucianism have a more pronounced effect on enhancing the effectiveness of internal control.The contemporary values of Confucianism have strengthened the ability of internal control to decrease agency costs and mitigate the negative influence of internal control on risk-taking.

Auditing the Auditors： The Audit Oversight Board and Regulating Audit Quality in Malaysia

The setting-up of the Malaysian Audit Oversight Board （AOB） in 2010 under the Securities Commission Amendment Act 2010 has extended the role of regulators into the statutory audit domain for public listed companies. Although the auditing profession in Malaysia has International Auditing Standards as prescribed minimum level of quality in the delivery of audit assurance services, self-regulation by the profession alone appears inadequate to ensure the delivery of quality audit services. With co-regulation, auditors now are monitored not just by the profession but also by a new statutory body with considerable regulatory powers to sanction auditors where quality of the audit process has been found wanting. This study solicits the opinions of auditors on their expectations of what the new regulator can achieve. Based on interviews with a sample of 30 auditors, the study finds that the majority believe that audit quality will be taken to a new level following AOB＇s remit of registration of auditors, compliance inspection with International Standard on Quality Control （ISQC）, monitoring of financial statement quality, and its power of sanctions. A review of AOB＇s early years＇ inspection confirms these expectations.

Annual report readability and corporate agency costs

Annual reports are the main sources of information for outside investors' investment decisions and enable shareholders to supervise the management.Difficulties with the readability of these reports may therefore have serious consequences. Using 19,221 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2001 to 2015, we investigate the association between annual report readability and corporate agency costs, where readability is proxied by report file length and/or file size. We find that firms with better annual report readability experience lower agency costs, and the negative association between readability and agency costs is more pronounced in firms with higher external audit quality, internal control quality or analyst coverage. These results hold after several robustness checks. The positive effect of annual report readability is stronger in private firms than in state-owned enterprises, and becomes stronger after the implementation of new accounting standards in 2007. Readable annual reports can help in monitoring corporate insiders' opportunistic behavior and thus reduce agency costs.