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This chapter focuses on the international aspects of auditing in the context of the airline industry for the year 2018. This chapter finds that International Standards on Auditing have been widely adopted in the global context. This chapter also analyses several observations related to the composition of audit firms (Big 4 vs. non-Big 4), types of audit opinions, emphasis of matter, other matters, material uncertainty related to going-concern, and types of auditors (single or joint auditor). This chapter covers the frequency of the four elements of describing key audit matters (KAM) in the audit reports in the global and auditor context as well as the KAMs observed in the airline industry and classifies them as industry-specific KAMs and entity-specific KAMs. In addition, this chapter analyses the requirements of the expanded audit report of the UK which includes the declaration of materiality threshold and scope of the audit in connection with the materiality and KAMs considering UK and non-UK airlines.

Great Britain is a laboratory for new techniques of public management; it is therefore an interesting place to look at for people willing to get involved in large public organisations. The French ‘institute for local studies’, trains future professionals, selected after graduation or after a working experience, in order to take high positions in local authorities nationwide. Three pairs of trainees belonging to the 2012–2013 group spent two weeks in three local authorities in England, with the purpose of analysing the performance management in these organisations.

British and French scholars dedicated to public organisations provided the six trainees with a global view of local government and reforms in the United Kingdom. After that, each pair exchanged information with the local authority they would visit; during the two weeks they spent there, an officer followed their works. They interviewed numerous professionals, elected members and unionists, attended meetings and events. Back in France, they presented their findings in several documents. The original subject was measuring and managing performance; in fact, the three pairs went farther and looked over many aspects of the organisations’ functioning.

Local authorities are facing important budget reductions and appear fragile; they put forward the idea of resilience to express the necessity of using all their resources to deal with a difficult situation. Elected members have a role of political initiative, but they also focus a lot on control, which is much more developed in Britain than in France; managers experience a very difficult period, with a lot of threats on their jobs, teams and projects. In this context, professional networks are very important; peer review is an interesting example of the role of professional exchanges in the search for new solutions. At last, unions don’t seek conflicts but try to accompany changes, lessening their negative consequences on people.

This work is not an academic one but an approach of the reality of organisations analysed by professionals or future professionals of the public sector, in a kind of ‘peer review’ between different countries. This international dimension is interesting, seeing that few in-depth comparisons between local authorities are made, especially between France and Britain.

Prior research finds evidence that audit quality is positively associated with the joint purchase of tax nonaudit services (NAS) and concludes that jointly provided tax services result in audit-related knowledge spillovers that lead to improved audit quality. We extend this line of research. We examine the relation between auditor-provided tax services and restatements and determine whether this relation differs when the auditor is a small or large accounting firm. We also examine whether the Securities Exchange Commission’s restrictions on certain tax consulting practices (SEC, 2006) altered this relation. Specifically, we measure whether the probability of financial statement restatements varies with (1) variation in accounting firm size (measured as PCAOB annually inspected firms versus PCAOB triennially inspected firms), and (2) the joint provision of audit and tax services. We find a negative relation between auditor-provided tax services and restatements which is consistent with prior research. We also find that this relation is significantly more negative when the auditor is a small accounting firm. Finally, we find that the lower probability of a restatement associated with the joint provision of audit and tax services persists regardless of auditor size after the SEC-imposed restrictions on certain tax consulting services in 2006. Our study provides evidence that accounting firms, and particularly small accounting firms, benefit from knowledge spillovers when jointly providing audit and tax services and these benefits lead to improved audit quality. Prior research concludes that large auditors provide higher audit quality and that the provision of tax services improves audit quality. Our results provide evidence that audit quality improvements are greater for small auditors and their clients. This improvement narrows that audit quality gap between large and small auditors. We do not find evidence that the SEC’s restrictions on certain tax consulting services altered the relation between audit quality and tax services.

Swedish local government audit has remained stable for a number of years. Political auditors are appointed to assess each local council’s work by the local council. They are assisted by professional auditors – however there is little standardisation of what audit means. The local council has considerable control over what the professional auditors do, setting out how they should be regulated, how they should be funded and what should happen in the aftermath of their reports. While the system has remained stable for a number of years, there are criticisms of how far the system advances local political accountability.

We analyze the economic consequence of government intervention on the incidence of accounting fraud and audit fees of both Big 4 and local big auditors on Chinese audit market in the period 2006–2013. In 2009, Chinese government issued favorable polices to local big auditors and required certain Chinese companies to give priority to these auditors. We find that market share of Big 4 auditors is quite stable before and after government intervention, but market share of local big auditors increases at the cost of local small auditors after intervention. Although audit fee premiums of both local big and Big 4 auditors have increased after intervention, the positive effect of local big auditors on audit fee premiums has significantly decreased. Further, both Big 4 and local big auditors are not likely to reduce the incidence of accounting fraud in pre- and post-intervention period. Our results suggest that Chinese government support to local auditors does not significantly enhance these auditors’ competitiveness in terms of audit fee and audit quality.

The development of the public accountancy profession in the last 200 years has increased the demand for the labor of professional accountants and enhanced the role and status of the professional public account. This increase in both the demand for the labor of professional accountants and for the professional services, which professional accountants provide, has resulted from the growth of capitalist enterprises, as well as institutional work on the part of members of the organized public accountancy profession. The objective of this chapter is to trace the historical development of the public accountancy professions in the United Kingdom and in France in response to contrasting institutional logics in these two countries. While legal requirements for external audits of company financial statements provided the basis for the development of the public accountancy profession as early as the end of the eighteenth century, differences in institutional logics, including differing conceptions of the relationship between individuals and the state, led to differences in the development of the public accountancy professions in the two countries. The primary argument of this chapter is that contrasting institutional logics have influenced the history of the public accountancy profession, which has evolved into one of the key regulatory structures of modern capitalism.