내부회계관리제도에 대한 인적자원 투자와 외부감사에 관한 연구: 직급별 감사시간과 감사품질을 중심으로

This study investigates whether external auditors adjust their year-end audit hours in response to the number of personnel whose tasks are related to internal controls (hereafter, IC personnel), and whether the adjustment affects audit quality. Using rank-specific audit hours which are publicly disclosed in Korea under External Audit Act, we find that the ratio of IC personnel to total number of employees (hereafter, IC personnel ratio) is negatively associated with total audit hours. As for rank-specific audit hours, the IC personnel ratio does not have a significant association with the partner audit hours, but significant negative association with the audit hours of managers and staff auditors who mainly perform substantive tests. These results indicate that auditors can relieve a staff-shortage problem at year-end substantive tests by relying on the tasks performed by IC personnel. We also find that the IC personnel ratio is not significantly associated with audit quality. Taken together, the results suggest that auditors effectively adjust their audit hours in response to the number of IC personnel, and maintain consistent audit quality. Finally, we find these results only in the sample of firms audited by Big4 auditors, It should be noted that this study is the first one that uses publicly disclosed audit hours, in examining the relationship between IC personnel and rank-specific audit hours. We believe that our results are more reliable and generalizable than those of any prior research that used proprietary audit hours in a single audit firm.