 Financial reporting quality and outsourcing of accounting tasks: Evidence from small private firmsHenrik Höglund and Dennis Sundvik Advances in accounting, 2016, vol. 35, issue C, 125-134 Abstract: This study explores whether the financial reporting quality of small firms differs between firms that outsource accounting tasks and firms that perform these tasks internally. Using accruals quality as a measure for the financial reporting quality and a sample of small Finnish limited liability firms, we find that the quality among the firms is positively related to the decision of purchasing accounting services from an external service provider. This result is also economically significant. The evidence shows that outsourcing of accounting tasks such as the preparation of the statutory financial statements and longer outsourcing relationships increases reporting quality. However, outsourcing of additional tasks, such as payroll processing, does not result in higher quality. These findings are consistent with previous studies showing that small firms in general lack the resources and expertise to prepare high quality financial reports. We provide evidence of an important yet under-researched area of financial reporting quality among small firms. Keywords: Financial reporting quality; Outsourcing; External accountant; Finland (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:advacc:v:35:y:2016:i:c:p:125-134 DOI: 10.1016/j.adiac.2016.03.001 Access Statistics for this article Advances in accounting is currently edited by Dennis Caplan More articles in Advances in accounting from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.