내부회계관리제도 운영인력에 대한 투자 수준과 기말감사의 효율성

In this study, the higher the level of investment in the human resources of the internal accounting management system, the more efficient year-end audit is performed by the auditor. In previous studies so far, the level of investment in the human resource of the internal accounting management system has been used as a proxy for the effectiveness of corporate internal control and the level of control risk. This study analyzes whether auditors are performing efficient audits using the information associated with the level of investment in the internal accounting management system beyond the role as a proxy of the company’s control risk. In this study, empirical analysis was conducted by manually collecting data on the implementation details of external audits, the number of internal accounting management personnel, the number of certified public accountants, and the number of months of experience across several classes of internal accounting management system. As the Act on External Audit for Stock Companies, etc. was revised in 2018 and the regulatory environment changed due to the introduction of the standard audit hour system, the sample period was limited to 2018 because the data after 2019 is expected to have structural shock. The summary of empirical results are as follows. First, the level of investment in the company’s internal accounting management personnel significantly reduced the auditor’s total annual input audit hour, and the audit hour for the final financial statements was significantly reduced, but it did not show a significant relationship with the audit hour for the quarterly and semi-annual financial statements. This indicates that auditors use the level of investment in internal accounting management personnel to evaluate t he c ontrol r isk of t he c ompany a s a whole, a nd a t the same t ime, i f the credib ility l evel o f information acquired in the company’s internal control system is high, auditors are efficiently performing year-end audit. Second, the level of investment in the company’s internal accounting management personnel significantly reduced the auditor’s effort to audit the final financial statements when the auditor continued to audit the company, but the relationship was not significant in the case of the first year audit. This indicates that in order for an auditor to perform an efficient year-end audit using the information obtained from the company, the auditor must form a certain level of trust through the previous audit of the company’s internal control system. Third, if the level of internal accounting management personnel is high the auditor performs an efficient year-end audit by reducing the hour spent on the year-end audit as the input of the interim audit hour to the company’s internal control system increases. This suggests that if the auditor determines that the company’s internal accounting management personnel are excellent and can fully utilize the information obtained from the company’s internal control system after the company’s internal control system is fully evaluated before the end-of-term audit.