Newsletter August 2020

31 August 2020

In this newsletter:
•    Online FAR Masterclass by Professor Jasmijn Bol on "The effect of audit culture on audit quality" - 16 October 2020
•    Q&A follow up session FAR Conference with Professor Anna Gold and Dr. Tammie Schaeffer
•    FARview podcast #7 with Dr. Justin Leiby
•    FARview podcast #8 with Professor Marshall Geiger
•    Vlerick Business School publication 'Does imitation pay when auditing companies?' on FAR research project
•    Publication ‘The future of Assurance in Capital Markets’ by Prof. dr. Robert Knechel
•    “New” website
•    FAR Annual report
•    Upcoming events – save the date!
•    Other

Online FAR Masterclass by Professor Jasmijn Bol on "The effect of audit culture on audit quality"

On Friday, 16 October 2020, from 4.00 – 5.30 pm CET, FAR organizes an online Masterclass by Jasmijn Bol, who is a Professor at Tulane University.

In business, employees are one of the most important drivers of success. Audit firms, in particular, rely greatly on employee cooperation and know-how to achieve organizational objectives. As a result, smart audit firms motivate and guide staff members to organizational goals. Without proper motivation and guidance, employees take actions that may not enhance organizational value or may even take actions that destroy value. Importantly, this does not necessarily suggest that they engage in fraud or intentional negative behavior, because value also evaporates, for example, when employees simply prioritize the wrong actions on a busy day. To mitigate these motivation and direction concerns, effective audit firms use a management control system. In this research study, the project team examines how Dutch audit firms use their management control system to motivate and direct auditors’ efforts towards audit quality. 

The Masterclass is now open for registration via this link.

Q&A follow up session FAR Conference with Prof. dr. Anna Gold and Dr. Tammie Schaefer 

The audience participation during our online conference was so vibrant, that there was not sufficient time to answer all the questions raised during the separate sessions.  

In this follow-up Q&A (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B031iF_Id4M&feature=youtu.be),

Prof. dr. Anna Gold (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Dr. Tammie Schaefer (UMKC Henry W. Bloch School of Management) address all remaining questions that were posed during their session on audit committee support and professional skepticism.

The full conference presentation (with live Q&A led by Rick Dekker and Marnix Pouw MSc Pouw of Deloitte) can be found here.

For the conference summary, including presentation slides and video’s, please visit the FAR website.

FARview podcast #7 with Dr. Justin Leiby

In this 7th episode of our FARview podcast series you can listen to Dr. Justin Leiby. He is an associate professor of accountancy at the University of Illinois. His research interests have been in the area of auditing, focusing on the social aspects of auditing. You can think of social bonds, social status and empathy.

In this podcast Leiby talks about two things:
1. The empathy in auditing and the effects of expert status, and
2. About his current FAR-project (with Anna Gold and Kathryn Kadous) ‘The effects of expert status on the audit of complex estimates’.

You can listen to the podcast on YouTube or Soundcloud.

You can find a written report of the podcast here.

FARview podcast #8 with Professor Marshall Geiger

In this eighth episode of FARview you can listen to Professor Marshall Geiger. He is a full Professor of Accounting and the CSX Chair in Management and Accounting and Professor of Accounting at the University of Richmond, US. One of the keypoints in this podcast is that 'going concern research in a COVID-19 era might flesh out more cleanly that more industry experience will lead to more accurate going concern opinions'. You can listen to the podcast on our YouTube channel or on Soundcloud.

We also have a written report of the podcast available, which can be found here.

On our website you can also find the relevant papers/publications relating to this subject: https://foundationforauditingresearch.org/en/research-publications/publications/

You can make a selection on author and/or tag here.

Vlerick Business School publication 'Does imitation pay when auditing companies?' on FAR research project

In June, the Foundation for Auditing Research (FAR) hosted an online Masterclass by Prof. Eddy Cardinaels and Prof. Kristof Stouthuysen on the topic of "The impact of auditor interactions on audit quality" which relates to their FAR research project.

Following the Masterclass, Vlerick Business School interviewed FAR researcher Kristof Stouthuysen and FAR Managing Director Prof. dr. Olof Bik about this research project.

You can read the article on the website of Vlerick Business School: https://www.vlerick.com/en/research-and-faculty/knowledge-items/knowledge/the-role-of-imitation-between-junior-and-senior-accountant

Publication article “The Future of Assurance in Capital Markets” by Prof. dr. Robert Knechel 

Efficient capital markets rely on a continuous supply of reliable and timely information and auditors are critical to this process. The economic value of an audit derives from making information more reliable to users (i.e., to reduce the risk of erroneous or manipulated information influencing the judgments of market participants). Traditionally, the focus of auditing has been on annual financial reports; however, given the speed of information creation and dissemination, the role of auditors may need to adapt or expand in the future. 

There are three areas where auditors might help improve information quality: (1) non-GAAP earnings, (2) ESG reporting, and (3) cybersecurity risks disclosures.

To provide assurance over these types of information, audit firms need to identify the appropriate subject matter for assurance, obtain the expertise to provide assurance, develop a verification process for providing assurance, and commit to a system of organizational support for the assurance process. Multidisciplinary practices have the potential to provide expanded assurance over more information, as well as assurance related to the processes that generate the information. However, success is not inevitable, and market, social, and regulatory forces will have much to say about the emergence of new assurance initiatives.

You can download and read the article here.

“New” website

We are proud to announce that we have recently made some improvements to the FAR website. The overall look and feel of the site has not changed but the publication repository should be much easier to navigate now, as you can search by paper, author or tag. We hope you will find this a valuable source of information.

Furthermore, we have defined FAR’s major themes and sorted our current projects by theme.  

The website is updated regularly with various interesting publications and research findings.

Furthermore, keep an eye on our events page for the latest events and masterclasses, for which you can register easily.

We hope you can find some time to explore the new site and make sure to check out the new Podcast page as well!

https://foundationforauditingresearch.org/en/  

If you have any suggestions for further improvements, please let us know by sending an email to info@foundationforauditingresearch.org.

FAR Annual Report 

We are pleased to present the fourth annual report of Stichting Foundation for Auditing Research (“FAR”) for the financial year from 1 January 2019 till 31 December 2019.

The objective of FAR is to conduct scientific research into (the drivers of) audit quality, to scientifically inform the management of the audit firms, the profession, and the public with regards to the continuous improvement of the accounting profession. Since the founding of FAR in 2015, the 10 affiliated audit firms, the research teams involved, and the FAR organization have gone through a steep learning curve and have invested heavily in building a now globally unique and reliable infrastructure for research collaboration and data exchange between audit practice and science. This has resulted in a research agenda that now consists of around 25 ongoing research projects and a lasting boost in the academic (Dutch) audit research community. Through proactive knowledge sharing with practice, FAR informs the profession, academics, and society about the first new research results of own FAR research during Masterclasses, via practice notes and our (improved) website, and at the International FAR Conferences.  

You can read our full annual report here.

Upcoming events – save the date!

Online FAR Masterclass – Professor Jasmijn Bol
On Friday 16 October FAR will host the online Masterclass by Jasmijn Bol on "The effect of audit culture on audit quality"

FAR International Conference 2021
We hope to see you all live next year at the FAR Conference on 21 and 22 June 2021 in Breukelen, the Netherlands. Please save the date in your calendar!”¯ 

Other 

Besides this newsletter and news related to events, we regularly publish literature reviews and practice notes on our website. Of course, you can read all about it in our newsletter, but please also make sure to check out these updates on our LinkedIn page as that is where we also share new podcasts and other articles.  

Want to be the first to know? Then don't forget to follow our LinkedIn page. 

Do you have suggestions on how to improve our newsletter or news you would like to share with us? Please let us know by sending an email to info@foundationforauditingresearch.org