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This study aims to investigate the effect of national culture (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation) on audit report lag.

The authors use two econometric approaches (ordinary least squares (OLS) and quantile regression) using STATA software for a sample of 1,208 firm-year observations over the period of 2017–2018.

Using Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimensions (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation), the authors find that masculinity and long-term orientation are positively associated with audit report lag, while uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with the same variable. Quantile regressions suggest that the adverse effect of masculinity on audit report lag is more prevailing for companies communicating companies' annual reports in a timely manner. Furthermore, the positive association between power distance and audit report lag exists only under tardy disclosure regime. Quantile regressions also confirm that the negative (positive) effect of uncertainty avoidance (long-term orientation) on audit report lag is maintained under different timely disclosure regime. Additional analysis conducted with respect to legal system shows that individualism becomes a significant predictor of audit delays with a significant negative effect for common law countries, while uncertainty avoidance has a positive effect on the same variable in civil law countries characterized by high level of discretion and secrecy.

The results of this study suggest that national culture as an informal institution may complement formal institutions (e.g. financial markets) in promoting timely disclosure. For instance, foreign investors may view high uncertainty avoidance scores, in common law emerging economies, as an indicator of transparency and timely disclosure.

This study adds to the extant literature a further understanding of the impact of cultural dimensions on timely disclosure, as proxied by, audit report lag. The use of quantile regression approach shows how different timely disclosure regime may affect the association between masculinity, power distance and audit report lag.

This paper aims to examine the role that auditor’s salary perception has on audit quality and delay. The findings contribute to a greater understanding of the audit employee-level factors that influence audit work outcomes.

The authors use Big 6 employee reviews, salary data and audit and financial data from 2007 to 2017 to measure how to audit employees’ pay satisfaction affects audit quality (small profits and going concern opinions) and audit delay. The authors use a regression approach to analyze this relationship. In subsequent tests, the authors split the sample on high career opportunities to investigate how this moderates the relationship between salary perception and audit quality.

The authors document a discrepancy between pay perception and reality. It is explained, though not completely, by salary level, comparisons to peers and superiors, firm-wide attitudes, cost of living and human capital in the area, work–life balance and perceived career prospects. Surprisingly, the unexplained pay dissatisfaction relates positively to audit quality and audit efficiency (audit delay), after controlling for salary level. Further tests show that an audit employee’s expectation of career opportunities moderates this result.

This is the first paper that empirically tests the relationship between pay satisfaction and job performance in the context of audit employees in public accounting. The authors contribute to an emerging literature that investigates audit employee-level characteristics and attitudes in relation to audit quality.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the association between internal control quality (ICQ) and audit report lag (ARL) and to test whether family directors affect the relationship.

ICQ is measured by using the framework developed by Michelon et al. (2015), while ARL is measured as the number of days from fiscal year-end to the date of the auditor's report.

Using a sample of 190 French companies over the period of 2016–2019, the authors document that ICQ is negatively associated with ARL, suggesting that ICQ represents a key determinant of audit delay. When testing for the moderating effect of family directors on this relationship, findings show that under high percentage of family directors on the board, this relationship becomes insignificant.

This paper extends previous research on audit delays by investigating the moderating effect of family directors on the relation between ICQ and ARL in the French setting. The empirical evidence highlights the adverse effect of the concentration of family directors on the board on timely disclosure as proxied by ARL.

Despite extensive research on the determinates of audit report timeliness, there is limited empirical evidence on the effect of auditor locality on audit report timeliness. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between auditor locality and audit report timeliness. Furthermore, this study investigates the moderating roles of audit committee, corporate governance and auditor quality in this relationship.

In this study, the information of 157 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during the period 2013–2019 has been collected. Moreover, multivariate linear regressions were used to test the hypotheses.

Findings show that in general, there is no significant relationship between auditor locality and audit report timeliness. However, empirical evidence suggests that in companies with specialized audit committees, strong corporate governance and high-quality auditors, auditor locality improves audit report timeliness.

Overall, the results indicate that there are some circumstances in which auditor locality affects the audit report timeliness. Specifically, the association of auditor locality and audit report timeliness is conditional to audit committee, corporate governance and auditor quality.

This paper examines the organizational resilience of audit firms during the early stages of COVID-19. The unexpected restrictions placed on travel and on-site working created unanticipated barriers for auditors in Hong Kong. The authors expect that auditors with greater organizational resilience can respond to unexpected situations and restore expected performance levels relatively quickly.

The authors utilize a sample of 1,008 companies listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) with a financial year-end of December 31. The authors identify five proxies contributing to organizational resilience: auditor size, industry specialization, diversity, geographic proximity to the client and auditing a new client. The authors use audit report timeliness as this study's main dependent variable.

This study's full-sample results suggest that larger auditors, industry specialists and auditors with closer relationships to clients issued more timely audit reports during the pandemic. The analysis of a subsample of companies that initially published unaudited financial statements reveals that industry expertise and longer auditor-client relationships significantly reduced the need for year-end audit adjustments. Finally, the authors find that larger auditors were more likely to offload clients, whereas industry specialists were more likely to retain clients.

The results of the paper suggests that audit firm characteristics associated cognitive abilities, behavioral characteristics and contextual conditions are associated with audit firm organizational resilience and, consequently, helps auditors respond unexpected changes in the audit environment.

The findings of the paper are informative for those involved in audit firm management or auditor hiring and retention decisions.

This study is the first to link organizational resilience to the performance of audit firms in a time of unexpected events. The authors connect three auditor and two auditor-client dimensions to the organizational resilience of the audit firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between audit report lag (ARL) and tax avoidance and test whether external auditor type affects this relationship.

ARL is measured as the number of days from fiscal year-end to the date of the auditor’s report, while tax avoidance is measured using effective tax rate.

Using a sample of 45 South African companies over the period of 2010–2013, the authors document that ARL is positively associated with tax avoidance and this relationship remains positive when the company is audited by a Big-4 audit firm and not significant when the company is audited by a non-Big-4.

The authors’ findings have important implications for auditors aiming to reduce audit risk as they may consider the impact of tax avoidance and pay more attention to companies with a high degree of tax avoidance.

The purpose of this study is to provide further evidence on the ongoing debate on the costs and benefits of mandatory audit partner rotation (MPR). Specifically, this study examines how MPR simultaneously affects audit reporting lag (ARL) and audit fees (AFs).

A simultaneous approach was adopted to further shed light on the findings currently documented by this line of research.

Using Australian data, it was found that MPRs increase AFs but do not affect ARL simultaneously in the year of MPRs. It was also found that the departing audit partners do not charge higher fees or delay the completion of the audits in the final year before their departure and that neither AFs nor ARL changes significantly for the second round of MPRs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study on MPR has examined the issue using a simultaneous approach although failure to consider the simultaneous effect of interrelated variables may lead to estimation biases and problems of parameter identification. The results herein provide further evidence that the clients do not bear both costs of paying higher AFs and having the delayed audits and that the costs associated with MPRs do not occur earlier and the costs associated with MPRs may dissipate over time.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relation between two dimensions of auditor quality, namely, auditor industry specialization and auditor reputation and the audit report lag.

The data collection focuses on companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange for the financial year of 2010 and 2011. To ensure data homogeneity and reduce industry bias, this study focuses solely on manufacturing companies identified by the Indonesian Capital Market Directory.

This study finds a negative and significant association between industry-specialist auditors and audit report timeliness. Companies audited by industry-specialist auditors have shorter audit delays. The authors also find evidence that Big 4 auditors perform significantly faster audit work than their non-Big 4 counterparts. In addition, this study reports a statistical and significant relationship between auditing complexity, companies’ profitability, auditors’ business risk, and industry classification and audit report lag. The results show that firms with a large number of subsidiaries and firms experiencing poorer financial performance are found to be associated with longer reporting delays. Moreover, audit report timeliness is found to be faster for companies in the low-profile industry sector and owned by family members.

Similar to other empirical investigations, this study is not without certain caveats. First, the period of audit report lag in this study reflects the audit work from the year-end to the audit report date. The authors do not consider audit work conducted outside this period in the analysis. Second, there are numerous control variables and although the authors have attempted to capture those variables to maintain the integrity of the research there are likely other excluded variables that may be important in explaining audit report timeliness. Finally, there are other factors, for example, an administrative approval process with the audit firm home office, which can affect audit report lags but have not been included in the model analysis. Future studies can seek to focus on refinements to the proxy measures for dependent and experimental variables.

Insights drawn from this study may be of assistance to policy makers as they consider the costs and benefits associated with varying levels of audit market concentration as well as providing a snapshot of the level of non-compliance on audit timeliness in Indonesia.

This study provides further empirical evidence on the relation between auditor quality and audit report lag using data from a different domestic setting. This study also enriches the auditor quality literature by employing industry-specialist and Big 4 auditors as a predictor for the timeliness of audit reports.

This paper aims to examine the association between audit firm tenure and audit report lag (ARL) and the impact of auditor industry specialization on the association between audit firm tenure and ARL.

Using Habib and Bhuiyan’s (2011) method of measuring auditor industry specialization, the authors examine the sample of 7,291 firm-year observations from 2008 to 2010.

The authors find that auditor industry specialization (regardless of city-level, national-level and joint city- and national-level industry specialization) weakens the positive association between ARL and short audit firm tenure, suggesting that auditor industry specialization complements the negative effect of short audit firm tenure on ARL.

First, the authors add to the literature by answering the question of whether hiring industry auditor specialists is an effective way to shorten ARL created by short audit tenure. The authors provide some evidence that the concern of short audit tenure leading to longer ARL is reduced by hiring an industry-specialized auditor. Prior research mainly focuses on identifying the determinants of ARL without going further to find out which are the effective ways to reduce the audit delay. Second, their findings can somehow resolve the debate on whether audit firm rotation should be mandatory. A new auditor’s lack of knowledge of clients’ business operations during the early years of audit engagements results in longer ARL, which eventually influences the clients’ financial performance. The authors' result suggests the firms can reduce this adverse consequence by hiring an industry-specialized auditor. Finally, their findings may provide helpful information to firms in selecting external auditors, public accounting firms in selecting a differentiation strategy and regulators in mandating audit firm rotation.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of corporate governance characteristics on audit report timeliness in Malaysia. The corporate governance characteristics examined are board independence, audit committee size, audit committee meetings and audit committee members' qualifications.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The sample comprises of 703 Malaysian listed companies from Bursa Malaysia, for the year 2009. It excludes companies from the finance-related sector as they operate under a highly regulated regime under supervision by the Central Bank of Malaysia. Further, regression analysis was performed to examine the audit report timeliness determinants.

Findings – Results show that audit report timeliness is influenced by audit committee size, auditor type, audit opinion and firm profitability. However, no association was found between board independence, audit committee meetings, audit committee members' qualifications and audit report timeliness.

Research limitations/Implications – It is a cross-sectional study of the year 2009. Practical implications for policy makers are consideration of the minimum submission period for audit reports Regulators' support for firms to have larger audit committee sizes is also discussed.

Originality/Value – The study investigates the impact of corporate governance on audit timeliness in light of the recent amendments to the Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance made in 2007.