Brian Daugherty

The Effects of Offshoring Audit Tasks on Jurors’ Evaluations of Damage Awards Against Auditors

Abstract Offshoring is the process of using unaffiliated foreign companies or affiliated offshore entities (AOEs) to manufacture goods or perform services. The Big 4 public accounting firms offshore tax services (Houlder, 2007) and, more recently, have started to offshore audit tasks of their U.S.-based clients to AOEs located in India (Daugherty & Dickins, 2009). While the benefits of offshoring might be substantial, there are also costs associated with moving domestic work to foreign locations. One of these costs may be greater damage awards in lawsuits involving an audit failure where audit tasks were performed overseas as opposed to the United States. This study investigates that possibility by experimentally examining the effect of offshoring audit tasks requiring different levels of judgment on the amount of damages awarded by potential jurors as a result of an audit failure. The results show potential jurors awarded greater damages against the auditor when audit tasks were performed offshore than when they were performed in the United States. There was no effect of the level of judgment of the audit task on damages awarded. Since this study examines offshoring to only one location, India, results may not be generalizable to other offshore locations.

Knowledge transfer among experts: lessons from audit partner rotation

Given the complexity of the transfer of tacit knowledge, the presence of robust knowledge transfer practices are particularly critical when experts transfer knowledge to other experts (e.g., when companies newly-appoint members of the board of directors, or during the succession of key executives). Accounting firms are unique in that in many jurisdictions partners assigned to audit publicly-traded companies are mandated to periodically rotate their client engagement responsibilities, and these rotations in the US have become more frequent following passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The purpose of this study is to learn more about the knowledge transfer practices of partner-experts in public accounting firms to better understand this critical element of the audit process. As similar between-expert knowledge transfer techniques may be appropriate for use in other business contexts, lessons learned from audit partner rotation may help to mitigate knowledge transfer risks in other organisations.

An examination of perceptions of auditor independence and financial reporting quality when former auditors are hired

This study examines perceptions of auditor independence (AI) and financial reporting quality (FRQ) when former auditors are hired by public companies into accounting oversight positions under differing strengths of corporate governance. Although the Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) mandate of a one-year cooling-off period for the hiring of former audit engagement team members into accounting oversight positions (e.g., chief financial officer) may enhance perceptions of AI, it potentially sacrifices FRQ by restricting the hiring of candidates most familiar with a particular companys industry, risks, and controls. The results of this experiment suggest when a company (i) has strong corporate governance and (ii) hires an audit engagement team member without a one-year cooling-off period, stakeholders perceive financial statement quality to be highest as compared to all other experimental conditions. Interestingly, we also find hiring a former auditor who has not cooled-off one-year results in roughly the same perception of AI as hiring an auditor observing the one-year cooling-off requirement. Collectively, results suggest stakeholders may not perceive a benefit from the cooling-off requirement as independence is not viewed as enhanced and FRQ is viewed as diminished. Requiring disclosure of auditor alumnus hires, in lieu of a mandated cooling-off period, coupled with external measures of companies’ strength of corporate governance may be sufficient to protect AI and FRQ.