감사위원회와 외부감사인의 커뮤니케이션이 감사품질에 미치는 영향 : 감사위원회의 특성이 미치는 영향을 중심으로

Abstract

External auditors perform financial audit work to enhance the credibility of financial statements written by a company manager. Audit Committee performs internal audit work with securing fairness and objectivity independently as a system for strengthening internal control before performing a financial audit work of external auditors. In this study, a connection to audit quality will be verified by using the number and methods of communication between the Audit Committee and external auditors announced to an audit report from 2018 by the act on external audit. Also, it will be verified that whether the connection between the communication of the Audit Committee and external auditors and the audit quality can be strengthened with the characteristics of the audit committee. So, in this study, a positive analysis was performed by using 2,104 company-year data as a sample of companies included in the non-financial industry listed on the stock market and KOSDAQ market from 2018 to 2021. As a result of the positive analysis, first, if was found that the audit quality improves when the number of face-to-face communication between the Audit Committee and external auditors is more than 4 times. As recommended in the 「Audit Committee Best Practices」, it was found that it is effective to hold regular meetings at least once a quarter to secure enough meeting time and necessary information for performing audit work in operating the Audit Committee. Second, the expertise of the Audit Committee was found to strengthen further the connection between the total number of communication between the Audit Committee and external auditors, the number of face-to-face communications, and the rate of face-to-face communication out of total communications and the audit quality. Third, the independence of the Audit Committee was found to strengthen further the connection between the number of face-to-face communications between the Audit Committee and external auditors, the rate of face-to-face communication out of total communications and the audit quality. Fourth, the activity of the Audit Committee doesn’t seem to have an impact on the connection between the communications between the Audit Committee and external auditors and the audit quality. Fifth, the number of training sessions of the Audit Committee was found to strengthen further the connection between the total number of communications between the Audit Committee and external auditors, the number of face-to-face communications, and the case where face-to-face communication was performed more than one time out of total communication and the audit quality. This study is significant since it explored whether the characteristics of the Audit Committee strengthen the connection between the communication of external auditors and the Audit Committee and the audit quality by expanding the preceding research. However, a limitation of this study is that there might be a factor not included in the control variables among the factors that have an impact on audit quality. Key Words : audit committee, external auditor, communication, audit quality.