외부감사인 상주인원비율이 감사품질과 자기자본비용에 미치는 영향

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계저널 / 31권 / 3호 / 175 ~ 209페이지
· 저자명 : 홍준용, 김현정

초록

본 연구는 감사인이 현장감사 시 투입하는 인원 중 상주인원의 비율이 피감사기업의 감사품질과 자기자본비용에 미치는 영향을 분석하고자 한다. 최근 ‘외부감사인과 기업 지배기구 간 커뮤니케이션’에 대한 의무공시가 시행된 만큼, 고품질의 감사를 유지하기 위해 외부감사인과 기업 간 상호소통의 중요성이 커지고 있다. 상주인원은 현장감사에 투입되는 인원 중 피감사기업에 상주하며 재무 관련 부서 혹은 감사기구와 의견교류 및 감사업무를 수행한다. 즉, 상주인원비율이 높을수록 기업과 원활한 의사소통이 가능하고, 외부감사인 감사팀(이하 ‘감사팀’) 내 구성원 간 의견교류가 활발히 이루어져 효율적인 감사가 가능할 것이다. 또한, 선행연구에 따르면 감사팀의 구성은 감사품질에 유의한 영향을 미치므로, 상주인원비율은 감사투입물로서 감사품질 향상에 영향을 미칠 수 있다. 따라서, 현장감사 투입인원 중 상주인원비율이 높을수록 감사품질이 향상될 것이고, 동시에 시장에서는 상주인원비율이 높을수록 재무보고품질 이 향상될 것으로 기대하여 자기자본비용의 하락으로 이어질 것이다. 실증분석결과, 상주인원비율이 높을수록 재량적 발생액으로 측정 한 감사품질이 개선되는 것을 확인하였으며, 상주인원비율은 자기자본비용과 유의한 음(-)의 관계를 갖는 것으로 나타났다. 즉, 상주인원 비율이 높을수록 효율적인 감사의 수행으로 감사품질이 실질적으로 개선되며, 시장에서 또한 상주인원비율이 높을수록 감사품질 및 재무보고품질이 향상될 것으로 기대하여 그 효과가 기대수익률에 반영되는 것을 보여주는 결과이다. 감사인의 특성에 따라 표본을 나누어 추가분석한 결과, 상주인원비율과 자기자본비용 간 음(-)의 상관관계는 감사인이 대형회계법인이 아닐 때, 그리고 감사인의 산업전문성이 낮을 때 두드러지는 것으로 나타났다. 즉, 시장에서 특정 기업의 감사품질에 대한 신뢰가 낮게 형성된 상황에서 상주인원 비율의 효과성이 강하게 나타나고 있음을 알 수 있다.

영어초록

This paper investigates the effect of a ratio of resident auditors among the total number of on-site auditing auditors on audit quality and cost of equity. As the mandatory disclosure of ‘Communication between External auditors and Corporate Governance’ has recently been implemented, the importance of communication between external auditors and client firms is growing in order to maintain high audit quality. Resident auditors continuously reside in the client firms to perform external audit tasks and exchange opinions with their internal audit organization during fiscal period. This communication enables the auditor to detect the occurrence of accounting irregularities and to effectively establish an audit plan by identifying the audit risk by each stage of the audit. In addition, according to previous studies, the composition of an effective audit team can improve audit quality by promoting knowledge sharing among audit team members. Since the composition of the audit team significantly affects the efficiency of communications, the resident auditor ratio can affect audit quality as an inputs of audit effort. Therefore, the higher resident auditor ratio, which enables the efficient communication between the auditor and the client firms and among audit team members, will lead to the improvement of audit quality. This study analyzes the relationship between the ratio of resident auditor and audit quality, and also analyzes the market response measured by cost of capital. If market expects that the higher resident auditor ratio leads to higher audit quality and reflects this to the market price, the cost of capital will decrease with increase of the resident auditor ratio. Therefore, the ratio of resident auditors would have the negative relation with cost of equity. This study used firms listed on KOSPI from 2014 to 2019 to investigate the relation between the resident auditor ratio and audit quality, and the relation between the resident auditor ratio and cost of capital. Data on the number of resident and non-resident auditor during on-site audit period was collected by hand-collecting through firms audit reports. To analyze whether the resident auditor ratio has the effect of improving audit quality, we used the discretionary accruals of Kothari et al.(2005) and the GM model of Gordon and Mohanram (2003), the OJ model of Ohlson and Juettner(2005), and the MPEG model of Easton(2004) were used to measure the cost of capital. We found that audit quality measured by the discretionary accruals was improved as the resident auditor ratio was higher, and the resident auditor ratio had a significant negative relation with cost of equity. These results suggest that the higher the resident ratio improves audit quality through efficient audit performance, and the higher audit quality lowers the information risk among market investors. As a result of additional analysis, we found that the negative relation between the ratio of resident auditors and cost of equity was stronger when firms were audited by Non-BIG4 auditors and when auditors’ industry expertise was lower. In other words, it was shown that the effectiveness of the resident auditor ratio was strong when the reliability of audit quality evaluated in the market was low. This study provided empirical evidence that, in addition to the characteristics of an accounting firm, the composition of the audit team can also affect audit quality and cost of capital as an inputs of audit effort. This study presented empirical evidence that the characteristics of audit team affect cost of equity as well as audit quality, and verified that the composition of audit team can affect the capital market investors’ decision making by forming expectations for the improvement of audit quality.

참고자료

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