Author
Listed:
- Michael Harber
- Alan Duboisée de Ricquebourg
- Warren Maroun
Abstract
Audit regulators remain divided on whether the costs of mandatory audit firm rotation (MAFR) will be outweighed by the benefits of the regulation. Existing research provides mixed results in support of the benefits of MAFR. This paper aims to complement these studies by examining what costs and benefits are experienced during the initial engagement after a MAFR. Interviews were conducted with dyads of South African audit committee chairs and audit partners involved in the same appointment process and initial audit engagement following a MAFR. While many audit committee chairs remained opposed to MAFR, most were impressed by the better-than-expected benefits of the fresh perspective and challenge offered by a newly appointed audit firm, and the less than expected costs of losing the incumbent auditor’s knowledge. By comparison, most audit partners expressed support for MAFR after their experience with the regulation and believed the policy would improve public perceptions of independence but raised concerns about the significant start-up costs their firms had been forced to absorb. As a result, while the findings suggest that the primary arguments against MAFR may be overstated, there is a risk that MAFR may compromise auditor independence by pressurising auditors to appease their new clients to retain the engagement and recover these initial costs. This paper provides insights for policymakers considering the costs and benefits of implementing MAFR, and for audit committees and auditors who seek to maximise the benefits while minimising the costs of their next MAFR event.
Suggested Citation
Michael Harber & Alan Duboisée de Ricquebourg & Warren Maroun, 2024.
"Costs and benefits of mandatory audit firm rotation: initial engagement experience of audit committee chairs and engagement partners,"
Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(1), pages 63-89, January.
Handle:
RePEc:taf:accfor:v:48:y:2024:i:1:p:63-89
DOI: 10.1080/01559982.2022.2130812
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
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:taf:accfor:v:48:y:2024:i:1:p:63-89. 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.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/racc .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.