대형회계법인의 감사가 숙박업체의 이익조정에 미치는 영향

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of external audit by big 4 accounting firms on the earnings management of lodging companies. In general, large accounting firms are known to provide higher audit quality comapred to non-large accounting firms. In other words, companies audited by large accounting firms are expected to engage in less earnings management. However, several studies indicate that results may vary depending on specific circumstances, such as industry type and company size. Therefore, this paper seeks to verify whether the audit quality of large accounting firms varies when targeting lodging companies. Using a sample of lodging companies from 2000 to 2022, we analyzed cases audited by large accounting firms and those audited by non-large accounting firms. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the discretionary accruals of lodging companies audited by large accounting firms were significant. The lodging companies, which are the samples of this study, are subject to the ‘Act on External Audit of Stock Companies’ and are registered as ‘lodging business’ according to the mid-category criteria of the Korea Listed Companies Association. Discretionary accruals were used as a proxy for earnings management and were measured using the modified Jones model (Dechow et al., 1995) and the performance matched model (Kothari et al., 2005). A lage amount of discretionary accruals indicateds a high level of earnings manage ment and low audit quality. The academic contributions of this paper are as follows. First, it examines the accounting sector, which has been relatively understudied for lodging companies, especially regarding repre sentative earnings management. Earnings management results from managers’ intentional choices, and if ex cessive, it can lead to accounting fraud. Second, unlike the general belief that large accounting firms provide excellent audit quality, the results are meaningful as they reflect the characteristics of domestic lodging companies. The practical implications are as follows. First, governing bodies such as internal auditors of lodging companies need to closely monitor the relationship between managers and accounting firms. Second, the managers of the lodging companies should consider that the audit quality of large accounting firms is not always excellent when selecting auditors. Third, lodging company managers should set fees that corre spond to audit quality. Fourth, auditors from large accounting firms should seek ways to ease earnings man agement when auditing lodging companies, and quality managers at these firms should strive to improve the audit quality for lodging companies. Fifth, the Securities and Futures Commission and the Korea Institute of Certified Public Accountants should pay closer attention to cases where lodging companies are audited by large accounting firms when selecting companies for supervision and overseeing audit reports.