Audit, Audit Committees and Narrative Reporting Bias

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María Rosario Babío Arcay
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Spain
Oscar Suárez Fernández
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Spain
Rosario Vidal Lopo
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Spain
Vol 22 No 1 (2013), Thematic Block The external audit: reflections to improve this activity
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15304/rge.22.1.1276
Submitted: 13-06-2013 Accepted: 13-06-2013
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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the rol of auditors and audit committees in the revision of narrative information. Using the tone of financial historical information contained in the Management Commentary as a measure of its quality, we study its relationship with certain characteristics which previous research has identified as determinants of audit quality and audit committees’ effectiveness in disclosure supervision. Our results indicate the presence of bias in the report that is not corrected by auditor or committees. The only outstanding result is auditor’ effort which is related positively to neutrality on tone, while audit tenure and non audit services, although not significantly are negatively related. Neither the independence nor the meeting frequency of the audit committee show any relationship with this measure of the quality of the information.

Keywords:

Narrative reporting, Impression management, Tone, Audit, Audit committee
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References

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