Offshore Shared Services Center Usage by U.S. Big 4 Audit Engagement Teams

Matthew G. Sherwood

Journal of Accounting Research, 2025, vol. 63, issue 4, 1679-1722

Abstract: Auditors frequently outsource audit work to offshore Shared Service Centers (SSCs) to reduce costs and ease the workload burdens of audit team members. However, concerns persist about whether these benefits come at the expense of audit quality. Using proprietary audit engagement‐level data, I evaluate whether greater SSC usage by Big 4 audit teams has an association with either, or both, audit quality and audit costs. I find that SSC usage is nearly universal in Big 4 audits, with the percentage of audit hours SSCs perform increasing in recent years. Consistent with the audit firm's objectives, evidence suggests that SSC usage is associated with fewer audit hours and lower audit fees. Importantly, I find no evidence that SSC usage is associated with lower audit quality. Overall, results suggest that SSCs have the intended effect of reducing audit costs without sacrificing audit quality.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679X.12611

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:joares:v:63:y:2025:i:4:p:1679-1722

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1475679x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Accounting Research is currently edited by Philip G. Berger, Anna Costello, Luzi Hail, Valeri Nikolaev, Haresh Sapra, Laurence van Lent and Regina Wittenberg Moerman

More articles in Journal of Accounting Research from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().