會計師創新氛圍感知與審計品質

Auditors’Perceptions of Innovation Climate and Audit Quality

在數位轉型與創新的趨勢下，會計師事務所積極營造創新氛圍，以因應科技發展與市場需求。然而，此種創新氛圍是否能有效提升審計品質，亟待進一步驗證。因此，本文探討會計師創新氛圍感知對審計品質之影響，以台灣四大會計師事務所合夥人為研究對象，透過問卷調查蒐集其對所內創新氛圍之主觀感知，並結合其於2019至2022年間簽證之上市櫃公司資料進行實證分析。本文利用裁決性應計數之絕對值作為審計品質的代理變數。實證結果顯示，會計師創新氛圍感知愈強，其受查客戶之裁決性應計數絕對值愈高，顯示審計品質可能下降。進一步分析發現，在非審計公費占比較高的子樣本中，此一正向關係更為顯著。這顯示當事務所過度強調業務創新與營收成長時，會引發主簽會計師在核心查核工作與跨部門非審計業務推展間的資源競爭，進而產生分心效果。

Amid the trends of digital transformation and innovation, audit firms are actively fostering an innovation-oriented climate to meet technological advancements and market demands. However, whether such an innovation climate can effectively enhance audit quality requires further empirical verification. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of auditors' perceived innovation climate on audit quality. Focusing on partners from the Big 4 audit firms in Taiwan, this research collects their subjective perceptions of the internal innovation climate via a questionnaire survey and integrates this with empirical data from the listed companies they audited between 2019 and 2022. This paper utilizes the absolute value of discretionary accruals as a proxy for audit quality. The empirical results reveal that the stronger the auditors' perception of the innovation climate, the higher the absolute value of discretionary accruals among their clients, indicating a potential decline in audit quality. Further analysis demonstrates that this positive relationship is more pronounced in the subsample with a higher proportion of non-audit fees. This suggests that when firms place excessive emphasis on business innovation and revenue growth, it triggers a resource competition for engagement partners between core audit tasks and cross-departmental non-audit business development, ultimately creating a distraction effect that diminishes their supervisory engagement.