Clients' strategic change and auditor behavior: Evidence from audit adjustments and audit fees

Bin Wu, Anqi Li and Wen Zhang

Advances in accounting, 2024, vol. 64, issue C

Abstract: Using data on audit adjustments, this study examines the relation between Chinese listed companies' strategic change and their auditor's behavior. We find that levels of audit clients' strategic change are positively associated with the magnitude of audit adjustments and audit fees, suggesting that auditors exert greater effort, and propose larger audit adjustments, on these audits. We argue that during a client’ strategic change, auditors rely less on prior experience with the client, and increase their perceived risk of the audit. Further results show a positive correlation between clients' strategic change and the experience level of auditors assigned to the client by the audit firm. We also find evidence that levels of strategic change are negatively associated with pre-audit financial reporting quality, indicating that auditors' perceived risk for clients undergoing strategic change is consistent with clients' real financial reporting risk. Evidence on regulatory sanctions suggests that audit adjustments mitigate the positive association between clients' strategic change and the likelihood of those clients' being sanctioned. Taken together, these results suggest that auditors incorporate clients' strategic change into their assessment of client risk and implement appropriate responses to that risk, and that audit adjustments help companies avoid regulatory sanction.

Keywords: Strategic change; Auditor behavior; Audit adjustments; Audit fees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0882611023000809
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:advacc:v:64:y:2024:i:c:s0882611023000809

DOI: 10.1016/j.adiac.2023.100721

Access Statistics for this article

Advances in accounting is currently edited by Dennis Caplan

More articles in Advances in accounting from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().