비감사서비스가 감사인의 독립성에 미치는 영향

Regulators are concerned that the provision of non-audit services to the clients increases the economic bondage between the auditor and auditee. Therefore it is suspected that auditors compromise their independence by allowing a high non-audit fee to clients with more accounting discretions relative to low fee clients. However, current academic research shows mixed results on whether the provision of non-audit services impairs auditor independence.This study examines whether providing non-audit service affects the independence of the audit opinion negatively using accounting accrual as a proxy for earnings management. Discretionary accrual and current discretionary accrual are measured with the modified Jones model (Dechow et al. 1995). Multiple regression is used for controlling variables including non-audit fee ratio and relative importance of the client. Empirical results show evidence indicating that existence of non-audit service and non-audit service fee do not affect the discretionary accruals. Classifying non-audit service into tax advice and non tax-related services does not show any increase in discretionary accruals. Additionally, this study investigates whether the size of the auditor and the auditee's industry classification makes any difference in this context. Analysis of the non Big-5 auditors shows that non-audit service does not increase the discretionary accruals. Rather, the Big-5 auditors show that the higher the non-audit service fee is, the lower the discretionary accrual is. This phenomenon applies both to the Korean Stock Exchange and KOSDAQ listed companies. With all this evidence, we can't find any result to show that the non-audit service has any impact on the auditor independence. On the other hand, results support a knowledge spillover effect, which implies that knowledge obtained in the course of the non-audit service assists the auditors to conduct audits more properly.