事務所內自發性會計師更換對公司盈餘品質之影響

The Effect of Spontaneous Auditor Change within the Audit Firms on Corporate Earnings Quality

10.29735/SJEB.200703.0004

馬君梅(Chun-Mei Ma)；謝永明(Yung-Ming Hsieh)

會計師輪調 ； 審計任期 ； 異常應計數 ； 盈餘品質 ； 審計品質 ； Auditor Rotation ； Auditor Tenure ； Abnormal Accruals ； Earnings Quality ； Audit Quality

東吳經濟商學學報

56期（2007 / 03 / 01）

79 - 105

繁體中文

本研究之目的在探討事務所內會計師更換前兩年度與新任後兩年度，公司的異常應計數（做為盈餘品質的代理變數）是否有顯著差異，以檢驗事務所內自發性的會計師更換是否對公司盈餘品質產生影響。基於國內為改善審計品質，擬採行會計師輪調制度，但不同於國外研究的會計師事務所定期輪調問題，目前國內仍少有研究證據，本文的研究結果對釐清此一問題應可產生增額貢獻。實證分析結果顯示，會計師輪調後之異常應計數絕對值顯著小於輪調之前，故會計師事務所內的自發性輪調確實有助於改善公司之盈餘品質。且此一結果在大型事務所（如：五大）較為顯著，但在其他事務所則不顯著。若依此結果推論，證期局等管制機構的強制輪調規定，對非五大會計師事務所應較為適用。但必須慎選適當的輪調時機，目前審計任期滿五年的輪調時點是否適當，應有更多研究做進一步的確認。

When facing the investors' suspicious attitude towards the effectiveness of auditing post-Enron, Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation proposes the mandatory auditor rotation as a response to the reforms requirement from capital market. We doubt on the necessity of this regulation, because prior research had documented the evidence of a negative relation between auditor tenure and absolute abnormal accruals (i.e. Johnson et al. (2002); and Myers et al. (2003)). However, this issue in Taiwan has two distinctive features: (1) Taiwan has a different audit market and (2) the mandatory rotation requirement is only within the same audit firm. Hence, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of auditor rotation within the audit firm on the corporate earnings quality. We use the absolute abnormal accrual as a proxy for the corporate earnings quality. Using a sample of 642 observations from Taiwan stock market, which incurred a spontaneous auditor rotation within the audit firm in the period from year 1997 to 2001, we examine the significance of differences between two-year averaged absolute abnormal accruals before and after auditor rotation within the same audit firm. The result of empirical analysis indicates that the means of absolute abnormal accruals after auditor rotation are significantly lower than those before auditor rotation. This result implies that the spontaneous auditor rotation within the same audit firm can indeed lead to improvements in earnings quality. In addition, our further analysis shows that the above result is more significant in the group of Big 5 audit firms but not significant in Non-Big 5 group, which implies that the effect of auditor rotation on improving corporate earnings quality mainly comes from the rotation within Big 5 audit firms.

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