IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/aosoci/v102y2022ics0361368222000198.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effects of audit committee ties and industry expertise on investor judgments—Extending Source Credibility Theory

Author

Listed:
  • Cohen, Jeffrey R.
  • Gaynor, Lisa Milici
  • Krishnamoorthy, Ganesh
  • Wright, Arnold M.

Abstract

Personal ties (e.g., belonging to the same country club) and/or professional ties (e.g., serving on boards together) between the CEO and audit committee members can potentially impair members' objectivity. Additionally, prior research indicates that audit committee member industry expertise enhances financial reporting quality. In an experiment with 342 reasonably informed investors, we find, as hypothesized by Source Credibility Theory (SCT), personal ties negatively impact investors’ assessments of audit committee independence more than professional ties, and industry expertise enhances assessments of competence. We also find investors assess audit committees with no ties and industry expertise (personal ties and no industry expertise) as the most (least) effective and indicate the highest (lowest) likelihood of investing. Further, extending SCT we find the incremental positive effect of industry expertise is greater when there are personal ties than when there are no ties. In a path model, competence and independence assessments directly affect each other, and in turn affect assessments of audit committee effectiveness and investment decisions. Finally, in a second experiment we find reasonably informed investors recognize variations in the nature of personal ties and that industry expertise attenuates the effect of advisory ties but not close friendship ties.

Suggested Citation

  • Cohen, Jeffrey R. & Gaynor, Lisa Milici & Krishnamoorthy, Ganesh & Wright, Arnold M., 2022. "The effects of audit committee ties and industry expertise on investor judgments—Extending Source Credibility Theory," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:102:y:2022:i:c:s0361368222000198
    DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2022.101352
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361368222000198
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.aos.2022.101352?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dana R. Hermanson & James G. Tompkins & Rajaram Veliyath & Zhongxia (Shelly) Ye, 2012. "The Compensation Committee Process," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(3), pages 666-709, September.
    2. Elliott, W.B. & Hodge, F. & Kennedy, J.J. & Pronk, M., 2007. "Are MBA students a good proxy for nonprofessional investors?," Other publications TiSEM 20271f1d-d385-4122-a175-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Feng, Mei & Ge, Weili & Luo, Shuqing & Shevlin, Terry, 2011. "Why do CFOs become involved in material accounting manipulations?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 21-36.
    4. Hwang, Byoung-Hyoun & Kim, Seoyoung, 2009. "It pays to have friends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 138-158, July.
    5. Amir Barnea & Robert Heinkel & Alan Kraus, 2013. "Corporate social responsibility, stock prices, and tax policy," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 46(3), pages 1066-1084, August.
    6. Eunice S. Khoo & Youngdeok Lim & Gary S. Monroe, 2020. "Audit Committee Members’ Reputation Incentives and Their Effectiveness in Monitoring the Financial Reporting Process," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 56(3), pages 348-406, September.
    7. Mark S. Beasley & Joseph V. Carcello & Dana R. Hermanson & Terry L. Neal, 2009. "The Audit Committee Oversight Process," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(1), pages 65-122, March.
    8. Joseph V. Carcello & Terry L. Neal & Zoe†Vonna Palmrose & Susan Scholz, 2011. "CEO Involvement in Selecting Board Members, Audit Committee Effectiveness, and Restatements," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(2), pages 396-430, June.
    9. Mark L. Defond & Rebecca N. Hann & Xuesong Hu, 2005. "Does the Market Value Financial Expertise on Audit Committees of Boards of Directors?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 153-193, May.
    10. Srinivasan Krishnamurthy & Jian Zhou & Nan Zhou, 2006. "Auditor Reputation, Auditor Independence, and the Stock†Market Impact of Andersen's Indictment on Its Client Firms," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(2), pages 465-490, June.
    11. Hirst, De, 1994. "Auditors Sensitivity To Source Reliability," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 113-126.
    12. Udi Hoitash, 2011. "Should Independent Board Members with Social Ties to Management Disqualify Themselves from Serving on the Board?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 99(3), pages 399-423, March.
    13. Hirst, De & Koonce, L & Simko, Pj, 1995. "Investor Reactions To Financial Analysts Research Reports," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 335-351.
    14. Anne M. Wilkins & Dana R. Hermanson & Jeffrey R. Cohen, 2016. "Do Compensation Committee Members Perceive Changing CEO Incentive Performance Targets Mid-Cycle to be Fair?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 137(3), pages 623-638, September.
    15. Amir Barnea & Robert Heinkel & Alan Kraus, 2013. "Corporate social responsibility, stock prices, and tax policy," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(3), pages 1066-1084, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mohammad Nasih & Raden Roro Widya Ningtyas Soeprajitno & Iman Harymawan & John Nowland, 2023. "Top Company Officers and Auditor School-ties on Audit Fee: Evidence From Indonesia," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bruynseels, L.M.L. & Cardinaels, E., 2014. "The audit committee : Management watchdog or personal friend of the CEO?," Other publications TiSEM 4efbab67-3b44-4eab-9f17-0, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Cédric van Appelghem & Pascal Nguyen, 2020. "Do CEO-Board ties affect the firm's cost of equity? [La proximité entre le dirigeant et les administrateurs a-t-elle un impact sur le coût des fonds propres ?]," Working Papers hal-02880367, HAL.
    3. Hoitash, Udi & Mkrtchyan, Anahit, 2022. "Internal governance and outside directors’ connections to non-director executives," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1).
    4. Saeed Rabea Baatwah & Adel Ali Al-Qadasi, 2020. "Determinants of outsourced internal audit function: a further analysis," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(4), pages 629-659, December.
    5. Florackis, Chris & Sainani, Sushil, 2021. "Can CFOs resist undue pressure from CEOs to manage earnings?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    6. Obermire, Kara M. & Cohen, Jeffrey R. & Zehms, Karla M., 2021. "Audit committee members’ professional identities: Evidence from the field," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    7. Sandra Cavaco & Patricia Crifo & Antoine Rebérioux & Gwenael Roudaut, 2014. "Independent directors: less informed, but better selected? New evidence from a two-way director-firm fixed effect model," Working Papers hal-04141284, HAL.
    8. Wu, Chloe Yu-Hsuan & Hsu, Hwa-Hsien & Haslam, Jim, 2016. "Audit committees, non-audit services, and auditor reporting decisions prior to failure," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 240-256.
    9. Vu Quang Trinh & Neelu Seetaram & Kiet Tuan Duong & Xuan Vinh Vo, 2023. "Collusive behaviour, risk and performance of tourism firms," Tourism Economics, , vol. 29(8), pages 2103-2128, December.
    10. Randy Beavers & Shawn Mobbs, 2020. "Director overconfidence," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 49(2), pages 389-422, June.
    11. Fang, Ming & Francis, Bill & Hasan, Iftekhar & Wu, Qiang, 2022. "External social networks and earnings management," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2).
    12. Badolato, Patrick G. & Donelson, Dain C. & Ege, Matthew, 2014. "Audit committee financial expertise and earnings management: The role of status," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 208-230.
    13. Arnold, Vicky & Bedard, Jean C. & Phillips, Jillian R. & Sutton, Steve G., 2011. "Do section 404 disclosures affect investors' perceptions of information systems reliability and stock price predictions?," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 243-258.
    14. Jean Bédard & Suzanne M. Paquette, 2021. "Audit Committee Financial Expertise, Litigation Risk, and Auditor‐Provided Tax Services†," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(1), pages 7-48, March.
    15. Fabian Dutschkus & Christian Lukas, 2022. "Social Relationships and Group Dynamics within the Supervisory Board and their Influence on CEO Compensation," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 74(2), pages 163-200, June.
    16. D. G. DeBoskey & Yan Luo & Linying Zhou, 2019. "CEO power, board oversight, and earnings announcement tone," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 657-680, February.
    17. Balsam, Steven & Kwack, So Yean & Lee, Jae Young, 2017. "Network connections, CEO compensation and involuntary turnover: The impact of a friend of a friend," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 220-244.
    18. Yin, Meiqun & Zhang, Jidong & Han, Jing, 2020. "Impact of CEO-board social ties on accounting conservatism: Internal control quality as a mediator," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    19. Raden Roro Widya Ningtyas Soeprajitno & Sri Ningsih & Iman Harymawan & Bablu Kumar Dhar & Suham Cahyono, 2023. "The School-ties Between Top Management Executive and Audit Partner: Exploring From Earnings Management in Indonesia," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.
    20. Friedman, Henry L., 2014. "Implications of power: When the CEO can pressure the CFO to bias reports," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 117-141.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:102:y:2022:i:c:s0361368222000198. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/aos .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.