초록 열기/닫기 버튼
본 연구는 감사시간과 감사보수를 이용해 감사인이 경영자의 실제이익조정활동(real earnings management: REM)행위를 인지하는가에 대해 분석하고자 한다. 실제이익조정활동은 기업의 장기성과에 부정적인 영향을 미치며 이익조정행위의 특성상 감사위험을 증가시키지만, 경영자의 영업활동상 의사결정의 결과로 나타나는 이익조정이라는 특성 때문에 감사인이나 감독기관이 이를 직접적으로 제재하기는 어렵다고 알려져 있다(Graham et al. 2005; Roychowdhury 2006). 하지만 감사인은 감사계획수립시 감사위험평가 단계에서 피감사회사의 실제이익조정과 관련된 활동들에 대해 파악하여 감사위험을 낮추려는 노력을 할 것이라고 예상된다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 감사인이 실제이익조정활동을 인지하여 감사시간과 감사보수에 반영하는지에 대해 실증적으로 분석하고자 한다. 만약 감사인이 인지한 실제이익조정의 정도가 상대적으로높았다면 감사수행시 이로부터 증가된 감사위험이 반영되어 감사투입시간이 증가할 것이고, 이에 따라 감사보수도 증가할것이라 예상된다. 실증분석 결과, 전년도 실제이익조정이 클수록 당기의 감사투입시간 및 감사보수는 유의하게 증가하는 것으로 밝혀졌다. 이러한 결과는 감사인이 실제이익조정활동의 증가를 감사위험의 증가로 인식하고 감사투입시간 및 감사보수를 증대시킨다고 해석할 수 있다. 연구결과의 외적타당성 확보를 위해 추가분석에서는 전기와 당기의 감사인이 변경된 경우를 표본에포함시켜 분석했으며, 당기 실제이익조정활동의 정도와 당기 감사시간 투입과의 관련성을 분석해보았다. 추가분석결과는주요 결과를 지지하는 방향으로 나타났다. 본 연구는 감사시간과 감사보수를 근거로 감사인이 경영자의 실제이익조정 행위를 인지하는가에 대하여 실증을 시도하였다는 점에서 선행연구와 차별점이 있다. 본 연구에서는 감사인이 경영자의 실제이익조정에 대한 직접적인 제재 권한이 없음에도 불구하고, 이를 인식한 후 증가된 감사위험을 낮추려는 노력을 수행하고 있음을 실증적으로 보여주었다. 또한 본연구의 결과는 최근 저가수임으로 인한 감사품질의 훼손현상을 감독하고자 하는 규제기관에게 감사시간과 감사보수가 감사품질의 측정에 있어 중요한 지표임을 제시해 줄 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.
In this study, we examine whether auditors are able to recognize managers’ real earnings management activities. Roychowdhury (2006) define managers’ real earnings management activities as “departures from normal operational practices, motivated by managers’ desire to mislead at least some stakeholders into believing certain financial reporting goals have been met in the normal course of operations.” This type of earnings management brings negative effects on a firm’s long-term performance and eventually increase audit risk by failing a company's operation. Prior studies argue that real earnings management is less likely to draw auditor’s attention even though real earnings management may bring audit failure because,unlike earnings management using discretionary accrual, auditors have no specific regulation to restrain managers’ real earnings management activities (Graham et al. 2005; Roychowdhury 2006). However, we expect that auditors may recognize managers’ real earnings management activities when they evaluate a firm’s audit risk during a audit-planning period. For example,in the audit-planning period, auditors carefully review a firm's various characteristics that might affect the firm's audit risk. The characteristics might include a firm's governance structure, operational environments, operational strategies, unusual sales and purchases, etc. These characteristics might be directly and/or indirectly related to a firm's real earnings management behaviors. In order to test whether auditors can recognize managers’ real earnings management activities,we examine the association between managers’ real earnings activities and changes in audit hours and audit fees. We predict that if auditors recognize managers’ real earnings management activities which might increase audit risk, they will increase audit hours and/or audit fees to reduce or compensate additional audit risk due to the real earnings management activities. Using the sample of listed companies in the Korean Stock Market(KOSPI) during 2003-2009, we find that both audit hours and audit fees as of year t are significantly increased as more managers’ real earnings management activities as of year t-1 are observed. This finding suggests that auditors request more input of audit hours and more audit fees in the current year after recognizing managers’ real earnings management activity from the past year of audit. In addition, we examine the case of auditor changes to check the robustness of our results. The results show that even though we include the case of auditor changes in our sample, our findings are unchanged. We also examine whether auditors increase audit hour when they recognize managers’ real earnings management activities at the same year. In other words, we examine the contemporaneous relationship between a firm's real earnings management activities and audit hours/fees. The results are again is consistent with our findings, suggesting that our findings are robust. This study have several contributions to both academics and practitioners by providing a new perspective about the role of auditors in recognizing a firm managers’ real earnings management activities. The findings of this study suggest that auditors are able to recognize managers’ real earnings management activities and reflect them in assessing a firm's audit risk. We also believe that our empirical evidence may shed some lights on our understanding of the potential effect of audit hours and audit fees as measure of audit quality. The findings of this study demonstrate that audit hours and fees are closely associated with a firm's real earnings management, implying that they are related to the quality of audit.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
real earnings management, audit risk, audit hour, audit fee
