0000000000006356
AUTHOR
Christopher Koch
showing 23 related works from this author
Effects of Client Pressure and Audit Firm Management Control Systems on Auditor Judgments
2015
We examine the effects of pressures from client management and the audit firm’s own management control systems (MCS) on auditors’ willingness to accept an aggressive accounting that is preferred by client management. We find that auditors perceiving more pressure from client management to accept the client’s aggressive accounting react by increasing the size of the proposed adjustment needed to bring the client’s accounting into conformity with GAAP. However, we find that when client management promotes the jointness of interests they share with the auditor or the audit firm’s MCS focuses the auditor more on client service quality the auditor experiences increased affinity for the client an…
The Effects of Auditor Affinity for Client and Perceived Client Pressure on Auditor Proposed Adjustments
2017
ABSTRACT This paper examines how auditors' judgments about accounting policies may differ when experiencing different levels of affinity for client management and facing different levels of pressure from client management. The theory of motivated reasoning is employed to analyze the effects of these two factors that should lead individual auditors to adopt as a directional goal the acceptance of client management's aggressive accounting. Accordingly, we predict and find that auditors experiencing greater client affinity and facing explicit client pressure suggest lower adjustments to clients' aggressive accounting, consistent with motivated reasoning's goal-related predictions. But our stud…
Reviewing a Friend - The Role of Social Ties in Review Work in Auditing
2016
Hierarchically structured review work is a pervasive element in many professional work settings, including auditing. However, little is known about social factors underlying the pairing of reviewers and reviewees and their impact on quality. The German auditing setting provides a unique opportunity to empirically observe review work at the highest hierarchical level. We investigate the role of social ties in the pairing of concurring auditor (reviewer) and lead auditor (reviewee). We find that the presence of social ties between the concurring auditor and the lead auditor resulting from local affinity, i.e., having the same dialect and working in the same office, makes it more likely for th…
Can Auditors Be Independent? – Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Client Type
2012
Recent regulatory initiatives stress that an independent oversight board, rather than the management board, should be the client of the auditor. In an experiment, we test whether the type of client affects auditors’ independence. Unique features of the German institutional setting enable us to realistically vary the type of auditors’ client as our treatment variable: we portray the client either as the management preferring aggressive accounting or the oversight board preferring conservative accounting. We measure auditors’ perceived client retention incentives and accountability pressure in a post-experiment questionnaire to capture potential threats to independence. We find that the type …
Academic Practitioner Auditors
2016
Academic practitioner auditors engage in academic research on top of their audit activities. Based on constructive learnings theory and evidence-based management theory, we argue that engaging in research helps lead auditors to deliver higher audit quality. Moreover, we expect that this engagement enables lead auditors to develop their professional reputation and, hence, to generate higher audit fees. Using data from Germany, where lead auditors frequently engage in research, we find empirical evidence for these conjectures. Our study contributes to the current AAA and AICPA debate about the value of bridging the gap between academia and audit practice.
Evaluating the Change Process for Business Risk Auditing: Legitimacy Experiences of non-Big 4 Auditors
2017
SUMMARY The business risk auditing (BRA) approach was developed in the late 1990s and partly incorporated into audit standards in the early 2000s. As such, BRA was a significant innovation in audit methodology. In our interview study, we examine the experiences of 38 non-Big 4 auditors toward the theorization and diffusion of BRA. We use the widely recognized framework from Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings (2002), emphasizing the importance of legitimacy within an organizational field, to evaluate the change process toward BRA. First, we observe that the theorization of the new concept of BRA was often of limited success as many non-Big 4 auditors found it to be too complex and remained unco…
Do local proxy advisors matter? – Evidence from Germany
2021
Prior research documents that the large US-based proxy advisors, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis (GL), play an important role as information intermediaries in corporate gov...
Professional Skepticism and Auditor Judgment: Does Trait Skepticism Mitigate the Recency Bias?
2016
In two experiments with experienced auditors, we examine whether and how trait skepticism mitigates the tendency to place a greater emphasis on the most recently presented information, the so-called recency bias. We measure trait skepticism using the Hurtt scale (Hurtt 2010), manipulate information order, and vary presentation mode across two experiments. When information is presented sequentially (experiment 1), we find that auditors who score higher on the subconstructs of trait skepticism related to evidence examination are less likely to overweight contrasting evidence and thus are less prone to the recency bias. When information is presented simultaneously and the task is complex (expe…
Joint Audit, Audit Market Structure, and Consumer Surplus
2017
We use a structural application of the discrete choice model to investigate how the introduction of a joint audit policy would affect audit market structure and consumer surplus. We perform this policy evaluation by identifying demand fundamentals in a joint audit regime and applying them to a single audit regime. We find that a joint audit requirement has the potential to change the audit market structure substantially but that the effects are sensitive to the specific policy design. For example, small audit firms gain market share in a joint audit regime but only if an equal sharing of the workload between the two joint auditors is not required. Our counterfactual analysis reveals that th…
Determinants and consequences of auditor dyad formation at the top level of audit teams
2021
Abstract This study investigates the determinants and consequences of forming dyads at the top level of audit teams, i.e., dyads between concurring and lead auditor. We apply the sociological theory of homophily, i.e., the implicit preference for similar others, to hierarchically structured auditor dyads. Our regression analyses reveal that sharing the same gender and the same ethnicity, measured by dialect, increases the likelihood of dyad formation beyond what one would expect based on the characteristics of the pool of available auditors. Further, we observe that forming auditor dyads sharing the same age is avoided, suggesting that the need to establish a legitimate hierarchical relatio…
The Effects of the Financial Crisis on the Organizational Reputation of Banks: An Empirical Analysis of Newspaper Articles
2018
The recent financial crisis has triggered an intense debate about the role of banks in society, presumably changing the criteria used in the evaluation of organizations. Against this backdrop, we investigate the changing role of banks’ organizational features in shaping different dimensions of banks’ organizational reputation. Using the media as an important evaluator, we measure the reputational dimension of visibility based on the frequency of newspaper articles and the reputational dimension of favorability based on the sentiment of newspaper articles. Drawing on social judgment research for developing our hypotheses, we expect that organizational features such as financial performance a…
Has the Push for Equal Gender Representation Changed the Role of Women on German Supervisory Boards?
2017
In Germany, an intensive public debate about increasing female participation in leadership positions started in 2009 and proceeded until the beginning of 2015, when the German parliament enacted a board gender quota. In that period, the share of women on supervisory boards for 111 German publicly listed and fully codetermined companies (i.e. those which are affected by the quota law) more than doubled from 10.6 percent in 2009 to 22.6 percent in 2015. In 2016, the first year when the law was effective, the female share increased again by 4.5 percentage points. Using a hand-collected dataset, we investigate whether the rise in female board representation was accompanied by a change in gender…
What Dimensions of Lead Auditor Expertise Matter for Audit Quality and Audit Fees?
2015
This study investigates the effects of lead auditors’ technical and managerial knowledge on audit quality and audit fees. The German institutional environment enables us to track auditors over their careers and measure their various personal attributes. We find that lead auditors’ technical knowledge is more important for audit quality than their managerial knowledge; however, their managerial knowledge is a more influential driver of audit fees than their technical knowledge. The results of various identification strategies including firm-fixed effects models, propensity-score matching, and instrumental variables approaches suggest that the observed relations are treatment rather than sele…
Are Audit Firms’ Compensation Policies Associated With Audit Quality?
2020
We examine how compensation policies of audit firms are associated with audit quality. Specifically, we investigate the effects of the ratio of variable to fixed compensation and the size of the basis for profit sharing (i.e., whether partners share profits in a small or in a large profit pool). For our analyses, we use detailed mandatory disclosure of the compensation policies in German audit firms. We document that compensation policies vary considerably across audit firms. We find that profit sharing in a small profit pool and high variable compensation are two characteristics of auditor compensation associated with lower audit quality. We also find some evidence suggesting that audit qu…
The Effects of Financial Crisis on the Organizational Reputation of Banks: An Empirical Analysis of Newspaper Articles
2018
The recent financial crisis has triggered an intense debate about the role of banks in society, presumably changing the criteria used in the evaluation of organizations. Against this backdrop, we investigate the changing role of banks’ organizational features in shaping different dimensions of banks’ organizational reputation. Using the media as an important evaluator, we measure the reputational dimension of visibility based on the frequency of newspaper articles and the reputational dimension of favorability based on the sentiment of newspaper articles. Drawing on social judgment research for developing our hypotheses, we expect that organizational features such as financial performance …
A Review of Bias Research in Auditing: Opportunities for Integrating Experimental Psychology and Experimental Economics
2009
The objective of this paper is to show opportunities for integrating psychological and economics research in auditing. For this purpose, auditing research that employs both the methodologies of experimental psychology and experimental economics is collectively reviewed. The review is structured along three fundamental research questions: (1) Are auditors prone to biases; (2) what are the consequences of biased judgment in auditing; and (3) do features of the audit environment interact with the biased judgment? While both the research approach of experimental psychology and experimental economics are employed for addressing these resesarch questions, both approaches differ in their focus and…
Limiting Auditor Liability? - Experimental Evidence on Risk and Ambiguity Attitudes under Real Losses
2009
This paper is motivated by the current debate on limiting auditor liability. In a laboratory experiment, the effect of limited versus unlimited liability on behavior under risk and ambiguity is investigated for risks involving small probabilities. The amount of liability is manipulated in such a way that subjects can pay with their show-up fee under limited liability, but they can suffer out-of-pocket losses under unlimited liability. Findings are that both risk aversion and ambiguity aversion are higher under unlimited liability than under limited liability, and these two constructs are correlated under unlimited liability. These findings provide new empirical evidence for the intuition th…
Exporting Corporate Governance: Do Foreign and Local Proxy Advisors Differ?
2018
Prior research documents that the large US-based proxy advisors, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis (GL), play an important role as information intermediaries in corporate governance worldwide. We provide initial evidence on the role of local proxy advisors, using the German setting. We analyse voting recommendations by local (IVOX) and foreign (ISS, GL) proxy advisors. First, we find that IVOX’s voting recommendations differ substantially from those of ISS and GL. Second, we observe that IVOX’s against-recommendations are significantly negatively associated with voting support. Third, we find that this association is particularly negative for voting outcomes at compan…
Towards Bankruptcy Prediction: Deep Sentiment Mining to Detect Financial Distress from Business Management Reports
2018
Due to their disclosure required by law, business management reports have become publicly available for a large number of companies, and these reports offer the opportunity to assess the financial health or distress of a company, both quantitatively from the balance sheets and qualitatively from the text. In this paper, we analyze the potential of deep sentiment mining from the textual parts of business management reports and aim to detect signals for financial distress. We (1) created the largest corpus of business reports analyzed qualitatively to date, (2) defined a non-trivial target variable based on the so-called Altman Z-score, (3) developed a filtering of sentences based on class-co…
Who makes partner in Big 4 audit firms? – Evidence from Germany
2021
Abstract This study investigates who makes partner in Big 4 audit firms. Building on prior qualitative research, we conduct the first large scale study using archival data to examine the incremental importance of different individual auditor characteristics for making partner. For our analyses, we collect information on German auditors from a business-oriented social network site. We conduct a longitudinal analysis for a cohort of Big 4 senior managers and directors to identify determinants of making partner. We find that economic capital, social capital, and institutionalized cultural capital matter for making partner. Further, we find that female and foreign auditors are less likely to be…
The Value of Auditor Industry Specialization: Evidence from a Structural Model
2021
ABSTRACT This study investigates the value of auditor industry specialization. In the first step, we use a discrete choice model to derive the first-order demand for auditor industry specialization. Our results reveal that clients have a general preference for auditor industry specialization, relating to both audit firm and audit office specialization. We observe that specializations at the audit firm and audit office level are substitutes. We also find that larger, more complex clients have a stronger demand for industry specialization at the audit office level. In the second step, we use the results from the discrete choice model to quantify the value of auditor industry specialists for c…
Disclosing Conflict of Interest - Do Experience and Reputation Matter?
2009
In a controlled laboratory experiment, we investigate the effects of disclosing conflicts of interest on the reporting of information providers. First, we replicate the findings of Cain, Loewenstein, and Moore (2005) that such disclosure makes misreporting more likely as it removes moral concerns. Second, we observe that these effects diminish given experience and find, to the opposite, that disclosure reduces bias in auditors' reporting as predicted by economic theory. Third, we identify disclosure of conflicts of interest as a potential impediment to reputation formation.
Limiting Liability? — Risk and Ambiguity Attitudes Under Real Losses
2013
Using a laboratory experiment in which the unlimited liability treatment involves real out-of-pocket losses, we investigate and compare the behavioral effects of auditors’ limited and unlimited liability on behavior under risk and ambiguity. We find that aversion to both risk and ambiguity are higher under unlimited liability than under limited liability, and that these two constructs are correlated under unlimited liability. Our findings explain why some auditors might be hindered in performing their duties properly under unlimited liability. Further, our findings emphasize the importance of appropriately modeling risk and ambiguity attitudes in economic models on liability.