TY - JOUR
T1 - Learning by Doing? La experiencia en auditoría del socio auditor y la calidad de los servicios de auditoría
AU - García-Blandon, Josep
AU - Argilés-Bosch, Josep María
AU - Ravenda, Diego
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 ASEPUC.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Despite evidence suggesting that specialised knowledge should be more relevant than generic knowledge to explain different levels of audit quality across individual auditors, no study to date has addressed the respective impacts of the industry-specific and the generic audit experience of audit partners on the quality of audit services. Our study investigates this issue in the Spanish audit market. We proxy audit quality by discretionary accruals and by the opinion of the audit report, and differentiate among client-specific experience, industry-specific experience and generic audit experience of individual auditors. As expected, our results show significantly higher audit quality when the client is audited by a partner with stronger industry-specific audit experience. Furthermore, we observe that neither client-specific experience nor generic audit experience of audit partners are significant determinants of the quality of audit services provided by these auditors. These results may have some interesting implications for audit firms. Therefore, whereas some prior studies on the related issue of industry specialization point out that specialised knowledge is more relevant than generic knowledge to explain the quality of audit services, our findings suggest that specialised knowledge is, in fact, the only type of knowledge that seems to matter.
AB - Despite evidence suggesting that specialised knowledge should be more relevant than generic knowledge to explain different levels of audit quality across individual auditors, no study to date has addressed the respective impacts of the industry-specific and the generic audit experience of audit partners on the quality of audit services. Our study investigates this issue in the Spanish audit market. We proxy audit quality by discretionary accruals and by the opinion of the audit report, and differentiate among client-specific experience, industry-specific experience and generic audit experience of individual auditors. As expected, our results show significantly higher audit quality when the client is audited by a partner with stronger industry-specific audit experience. Furthermore, we observe that neither client-specific experience nor generic audit experience of audit partners are significant determinants of the quality of audit services provided by these auditors. These results may have some interesting implications for audit firms. Therefore, whereas some prior studies on the related issue of industry specialization point out that specialised knowledge is more relevant than generic knowledge to explain the quality of audit services, our findings suggest that specialised knowledge is, in fact, the only type of knowledge that seems to matter.
KW - Audit quality
KW - Client-specific experience
KW - Generic audit experience
KW - Individual auditor
KW - Industry-specific experience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85091008618&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.6018/rcsar.366921
DO - 10.6018/rcsar.366921
M3 - Artículo
AN - SCOPUS:85091008618
SN - 1138-4891
VL - 23
SP - 197
EP - 209
JO - Revista de Contabilidad-Spanish Accounting Review
JF - Revista de Contabilidad-Spanish Accounting Review
IS - 2
ER -