0000000000377016
AUTHOR
Christopher Humphrey
Beyond the audit expectations gap
In seeking to encourage a broader, European dimension to research on auditing and audit expectations, this paper examines the recent history of auditing and its regulation in Spain within the context of international developments in the accounting profession. The more expansive role being assigned to the audit function in Spain following the implementation of the Fourth and Eighth European Company Law Directives is generally viewed by Spanish writers as a progressive step, with largely positive effects. Such views stand in some contrast to the history of auditing in Britain, where the prevalence of an ‘audit expectations gap’ suggests a rather more problematic state of affairs. In exploring…
El Debate de la Responsabilidad Civil de la Auditoría en España: la Construcción del Discurso Sobre la Limitación de Responsabilidades por las Corporaciones Profesionales
RESUMENEl objetivo de este trabajo es someter a analisis el estado actual de la crisis de responsabilidad civil de la auditoria en Espana. Este estadio pone de relieve la forma en la cual la profesion auditora ha utilizado cierta retorica para resaltar los efectos criticos que puede generar el regimen de responsabilidad civil, con el objeto de condicionar un cambio en la regulacion. En este trabajo se revela como en el momento de gestacion de la Ley de Auditoria y en los primeros momentos de su implantacion (finales de la decada de los ochenta y principio de los noventa) el alto nivel de responsabilidad civil asumido por los profesionales no fue considerada una cuestion problematica para la…
The corporate image of auditors in a developing audit market within the EU: the case of Spain
This paper examines the images of audit firms in Spain. Spain offers a valuable research context in that it is a relatively new audit market and one where the top company audits are not totally dominated by the large multinational audit firms, allowing for a comparison of the images of such firms against those associated with smaller, national audit firms. The findings of this survey are pertinent given the current level of debate internationally over the role, regulation and quality of auditing services and concerns over the potential impact of recent corporate scandals on auditor reputation. Our study shows that the images of audit firms in Spain have differed on a number of dimensions, m…
Auditors versus third parties and others: the unusual case of the Spanish audit liability “crisis”
This paper challenges the increasingly accepted position that, internationally, the audit profession is facing a major liability crisis. Its analysis of auditing developments in Spain since the late 1980s reveals an audit liability “crisis” which is more the result of the profession’s campaign to align itself with legal regimes abroad rather than a direct consequence of major legal settlements in favour of third parties. The Spanish experience is made particularly interesting by the dramatic change in the auditing profession’s stance - clearly rejecting responsibilities and legal traditions that it had willingly accepted just over a decade ago (when auditing was established in statute). A …