IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jaecon/v76y2023i1s0165410122000957.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Delegated leadership at public accounting firms

Author

Listed:
  • Lennox, Clive
  • Wang, Chunfei
  • Wu, Xi

Abstract

Public accounting firms are owned by all equity partners, but day-to-day management is generally delegated to a team of leaders. Using data from China, this study examines which equity partners are selected to the firm's national leadership team, and whether firmwide audit quality is related to leadership attributes. We find that a partner is more likely to be selected as a leader if the partner is more experienced in public company auditing and has attracted more new clients to the firm. Firmwide audit quality is higher when leaders are more experienced in public company audits or have a past record of larger audit adjustments, and is lower when leaders have attracted more high-risk new clients to the firm. Leadership attributes exhibit a relatively strong (weak) association with audit quality at the headquarters (branch offices). Moreover, audit quality is higher when a firm has more leaders in an audit-quality role.

Suggested Citation

  • Lennox, Clive & Wang, Chunfei & Wu, Xi, 2023. "Delegated leadership at public accounting firms," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:76:y:2023:i:1:s0165410122000957
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2022.101572
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165410122000957
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jacceco.2022.101572?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. Lennox, Clive & Wang, Zi-Tian & Wu, Xi, 2018. "Earnings management, audit adjustments, and the financing of corporate acquisitions: Evidence from China," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 21-40.
    2. Renee B. Adams & Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael S. Weisbach, 2010. "The Role of Boards of Directors in Corporate Governance: A Conceptual Framework and Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 58-107, March.
    3. Preeti Choudhary & Kenneth Merkley & Katherine Schipper, 2022. "The Costs of Waiving Audit Adjustments," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(5), pages 1813-1857, December.
    4. Steven Huddart & Pierre Jinghong Liang, 2003. "Accounting in Partnerships," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 410-414, May.
    5. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1067-1101.
    6. Daniel Aobdia, 2020. "The Economic Consequences of Audit Firms’ Quality Control System Deficiencies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(7), pages 2883-2905, July.
    7. Michael Firth & Phyllis L. L. Mo & Raymond M. K. Wong, 2012. "Auditors’ Organizational Form, Legal Liability, and Reporting Conservatism: Evidence from China," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(1), pages 57-93, March.
    8. Marianne Bertrand & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2010. "Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 228-255, July.
    9. Jonathan Levin & Steven Tadelis, 2005. "Profit Sharing and the Role of Professional Partnerships," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(1), pages 131-171.
    10. Xi Wu & Junsheng Zhang, 2014. "Stock market reaction to regulatory investigation announcements," China Journal of Accounting Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 37-52, January.
    11. John, Kose & Senbet, Lemma W., 1998. "Corporate governance and board effectiveness1," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 371-403, May.
    12. Clive Lennox & Chunfei Wang & Xi Wu, 2020. "Opening Up the “Black Box” of Audit Firms: The Effects of Audit Partner Ownership on Audit Adjustments," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(5), pages 1299-1341, December.
    13. Gipper, Brandon & Hail, Luzi & Leuz, Christian, 2021. "Determinants and career consequences of early audit partner rotations," CFS Working Paper Series 676, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    14. Aobdia, Daniel, 2019. "Do practitioner assessments agree with academic proxies for audit quality? Evidence from PCAOB and internal inspections," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 144-174.
    15. Yves Gendron & Laura F. Spira, 2009. "What Went Wrong? The Downfall of Arthur Andersen and the Construction of Controllability Boundaries Surrounding Financial Auditing," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(4), pages 987-1027, December.
    16. Lennox, Clive & Wu, Xi & Zhang, Tianyu, 2016. "The effect of audit adjustments on earnings quality: Evidence from China," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 545-562.
    17. Kevin C. W. Chen & Tai‐Yuan Chen & Weifang Han & Hongqi Yuan, 2022. "Auditors Under Fire: The Association Between Audit Errors and the Career Setbacks of Individual Auditors," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(3), pages 853-900, June.
    18. DeAngelo, Linda Elizabeth, 1981. "Auditor size and audit quality," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 183-199, December.
    19. Karla M. Johnstone & Jean C. Bedard, 2004. "Audit Firm Portfolio Management Decisions," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 659-690, September.
    20. Burrows, Geoff & Black, Christopher, 1998. "Profit sharing in Australian Big 6 accounting firms: An exploratory study," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 23(5-6), pages 517-530.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Pan, Yue & Shroff, Nemit & Zhang, Pengdong, 2023. "The dark side of audit market competition," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1).
    2. Daniel Aobdia, 2020. "The Economic Consequences of Audit Firms’ Quality Control System Deficiencies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(7), pages 2883-2905, July.
    3. Chy, Mahfuz & De Franco, Gus & Su, Barbara, 2021. "The effect of auditor litigation risk on clients' access to bank debt: Evidence from a quasi-experiment," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1).
    4. Ji, Xu-dong & Lu, Wei & Qu, Wen, 2018. "Internal control risk and audit fees: Evidence from China," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 266-287.
    5. Marianne Bertrand & Sandra E Black & Sissel Jensen & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2019. "Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Effect of Board Quotas on Female Labour Market Outcomes in Norway," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(1), pages 191-239.
    6. Kevin Koh & Li Li & Xuejiao Liu & Chunfei Wang, 2023. "The Effect of Audit Partner Diversity on Audit Quality: Evidence from China," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 59(1), pages 340-380, March.
    7. Clive Lennox & Chunfei Wang & Xi Wu, 2020. "Opening Up the “Black Box” of Audit Firms: The Effects of Audit Partner Ownership on Audit Adjustments," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(5), pages 1299-1341, December.
    8. Shahzad Hussain & Syed Muhammad Amir Shah, 2017. "Corporate Governance and Downside Systematic Risk with a Moderating Role of Socio-Political in Pakistan," Business & Economic Review, Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, Pakistan, vol. 9(4), pages 233-258, December.
    9. Ege, Matthew S. & Stuber, Sarah B., 2022. "Are auditors rewarded for low audit quality? The case of auditor lenience in the insurance industry," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1).
    10. Lijing Tong & Bin Wu & Min Zhang, 2023. "Local Gambling Attitudes and Audit Quality: Evidence from Audit Adjustments," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 59(1), pages 381-410, March.
    11. Jürgen Ernstberger & Christopher Koch & Eva Maria Schreiber & Greg Trompeter, 2020. "Are Audit Firms' Compensation Policies Associated with Audit Quality?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(1), pages 218-244, March.
    12. van Brenk, Herman & Renes, Remko & Trompeter, Gregory M., 2022. "Auditing in the public interest: Reforming the profession by building on the strengths of the existing accounting firms," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    13. Mowchan, Michael J., 2023. "Do accounting firms change strategy through office managing partner appointments? Evidence from the U.S," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    14. Ferreira, Daniel & Ginglinger, Edith & Laguna, Marie-Aude & Skalli, Yasmine, 2017. "Board Quotas and Director-Firm Matching," CEPR Discussion Papers 12117, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Mario Daniele Amore & Orsola Garofalo & Alessandro Minichilli, 2014. "Gender Interactions Within the Family Firm," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(5), pages 1083-1097, May.
    16. Sumit Agarwal & Richard K. Green & Eric Rosenblatt & Vincent Yao & Jian Zhang, 2015. "Who Bears the Pen? Relative Income and Gender Gap in Mortgage Signing Order," Working Paper 9475, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    17. Fang,Sheng & Goh,Chorching & Roberts,Mark & Xu,L. Colin & Zeufack,Albert G., 2020. "Female Business Leaders, Business and Cultural Environment, and Productivity around the World," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9275, The World Bank.
    18. Oladipo, Oluwasheyi S. & Platt, Katarzyna & Shim, Hyoung Suk, 2020. "Managerial Performance of a Female-Owned and Home-Based Firm," IZA Discussion Papers 13981, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Hwang, Seokyoun & Sarath, Bharat & Han, Seung-youb, 2022. "Auditor independence: The effect of auditors’ quality control efforts and corporate governance," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    20. Berger, Allen N. & Kick, Thomas & Schaeck, Klaus, 2014. "Executive board composition and bank risk taking," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 48-65.

    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:jaecon:v:76:y:2023:i:1:s0165410122000957. 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/jae .

    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.