기업의 전략변화도와 재무제표 품질 그리고 감사인의 산업전문성

[Purpose]This study investigates the impact of a firm’s strategic change on the accounting quality. Strategic change that affect the overall operation of the firm will increase the instability of the organizational structure. Therefore the greater the change in strategy, the lower the accounting quality. [Methodology]In this study, the strategic changes were measured to the extent that the change in the resource allocation method for the firm to compete in the current business area by the method in Finkelstein and Hambrick(1990). The accounting quality was measured using the Kothari et al.(2005) and McNichols(2002) model. This study uses 9,978 firm－year observations listed on Korea Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2012. [Findings]The accounting quality decreased as the degree of strategic change increased. This means that the greater the degree of a strategic change, the greater the incentive for manipulating its financial statements to ensure the justification for the strategic change. And if the auditor is an industry expert, the negative impact of the strategic change on accounting quality has been shown to decrease. [Policy Implications]The results of this study suggest that the financial regulator needs to consider this in the future process of selecting or designating auditors for industry specialist audit partners during external audits of companies with high strategic change.