감사위원회와 외부감사인 간 커뮤니케이션 행태와 감사품질 간의 관계

This study analyzes the effect of communication behavior between the audit committee and external auditor on audit hours and audit fees represented by audit quality. This paper examines whether communication behavior of audit committees is effective in ensuring audit quality. This study empirically analyzes the effects of various communication types and their contents on audit quality for firms listed on Korea stock market during 2018-2020. We find positive relationship between the frequency of separate communication with the external auditor and audit quality. Also, the ratio and frequency of face-to-face communication presents positive association with the audit fees and audit hours. In addition, the number of discussions on key audit matters and internal accounting management system with the external auditor are positively associated with audit fees and audit hours. In particular, the discussion on key audit matters is a statistically, positively associated with the audit fee per hour. Accordingly, we examine the effect of discussion of key audit matters on the audit hours for each rank of auditor. We find that the discussion on key audit matters differently affect to the audit hours by each rank, and that the audit hours might be strengthened when the firms are audited by higher rank auditor. Prior literature focused on the external aspects of communication behavior with external auditors. On the other hand, our findings provide the contribution that separate communication and their qualitative contents with audit firms might be effective in audit committees and external auditor’s decision-making.