Faculty of Business Administration
Visiting Scholar Seminar
Does Experience as Independent Directors Improve Individual Auditors’ Audit Quality?
Prof. Yingwen Guo
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Nanjing University
Date: 16 December 2020 (Wednesday)
Time: 10:00-11:30
Venue: E22-G010
Abstract
This study examines whether individual auditors with experience as independent directors (IDAPs) provide higher audit quality than those without directorship experience. Using the Chinese setting where audit partners’ names are disclosed publicly, we find that IDAPs provide higher audit quality for clients that operate in the same industries as the companies where they concurrently hold or used to hold directorship. However, directorship experience at companies in different industries has an insignificant effect on audit quality. The findings suggest that serving as independent directors enables audit partners to gain industry-related knowledge, thereby creating a knowledge spillover effect on the audits of clients in the same industries as their directorships. This study contributes to the literature by identifying an alternative channel through which auditors gain industry-related knowledge to enhance their competencies.
Biography
Dr. Yingwen Guo is an assistant professor of accounting in Business School of Nanjing University, China. She received her Ph.D. in Accounting from City University of Hong Kong. She is active in accounting research and her current research areas and interests cover auditing, taxation and big data. She has published accounting research papers in leading journals such as Auditing: a Journal of Practice and Theory, Accounting and Business Research, etc.
