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This study aims to examine the effect on audit efficiency of outsourced internal audit function (IAF) providers with industry and/or firm-specific expertise. Drawing on relevant studies from external and internal audit literature, the authors assume that such IAF providers are associated with greater audit efficiency as proxied by audit report lag and audit fees.

Based on a sample of firms listed on the Omani capital market during 2005–2019, the pooled regressions are used to test the developed hypotheses. The authors use the market share approach to identify outsourced IAF industry expertise providers and tenure to measure the firm-specific expertise of outsourced IAF providers.

The authors find that industry outsourced IAF providers are not associated with shorter audit report lag and lower audit fees. The authors also find that firm-specific expertise outsourced IAF providers are associated with a greater reduction in audit report lag and audit fees. These conclusions are robust under a battery of analyses. The significant contribution of firm-specific expertise outsourced IAF providers to audit efficiency is incremental when abnormal audit report lag and audit fees analysis is conducted.

The results are the first to attest to the contribution of outsourced IAF with firm-specific expertise. They also show that industry expertise held by outsourced IAF providers does not contribute to audit efficiency.

Research investigating the association between religiosity and earnings management has concentrated on accruals-based earnings management, relying heavily on society’s religiosity, but it has neglected the interaction between religiosity and formal monitoring mechanisms. This study aims to examine how the religiosity and accounting expertise traits of top leaders are associated with real earnings management (REM) and how they interact to eliminate these practices.

Using a sample of 943 year-observations from more religious settings, this paper collects data for four measures of REM, and for religiosity and accounting expertise of audit committee (AC) chair and chief executive officer (CEO). Multivariate regression is used to test the study hypotheses.

The findings are consistent with the predictions that religious top leaders are not associated with lower REM, while top leaders with accounting expertise, in some cases, are associated with lower REM. This paper also finds that a leader with religious belief and accounting expertise dramatically lowers REM. These findings are robust under a battery of sensitive analyzes. In an additional analysis, this paper observes the interaction effect between these two traits is strengthened if the board chair is religious, and persists even for larger firms or those with a highly concentrated ownership structure.

The paper provides evidence that may serve a variety of decision-makers. It is the first to show that the interaction between religiosity and expertise is crucial in curbing REM. It also provides the first evidence for the role of the AC chair in relation to REM.

In response to the users of financial statements’ need for better communication value from audit reports, auditors are required to expand the format and content of their reports. This paper aims to investigate the heterogeneity of key audit matters (KAM) for big4 audit firms.

Using a pool of 273 year-observations from the Omani capital market for the period 2016–2019, a quantile regression approach is adopted to achieve this purpose because it can provide a broader picture of this heterogeneity.

The results indicate that all types of big4 audit firms are associated with lower numbers of KAM. However, each big4 audit firm reports these KAM differently. Also, the results indicate heterogeneity in the number of KAM among the partners of each firm. Specifically, partners in some big4 audit firms show a significant association with fewer KAM while others are insignificant. Some partners of Ernst and Young show a positive association with a higher number of KAM. Overall, the results confirm the heterogeneity among auditors in styling their KAM disclosure.

There are crucial implications for various policymakers. This paper is the first to analyse KAM aspects at the partner level and use quantile regression to detect the effect of audit firms on KAM.

This study aims to examine how new regulation changes for the auditor’s report, so-called key audit matters (KAMs), influence tax avoidance.

This study uses data from firms listed on the Omani capital market over the period 2012–2019 and analyzes these data using pooled panel data regression with a robust standard error. It uses two common proxies for tax avoidance and two measures for the KAMs disclosure requirement.

This study finds a sharp decrease in the effective tax rate following the introduction of KAMs disclosure and the issuance of more KAMs in audit reports. This result is supported by several robustness checks. In an additional analysis, the authors observe interesting results, indicating that real earnings management mediates this association, while the audit committee plays a moderating role. The authors do not find a moderating effect of Big4 on this association, but find discrepancies within the Big4 firms in relation to this moderating effect.

The results of this study indicate that although the introduction of the KAMs disclosure requirement may have positive consequences, it may also lead to unintended negative consequences. This conclusion has not been comprehensively reported in literature.

This study aims to provide archival evidence on the impact of board characteristics on corporate social responsibility (CSR) monetary performance and how they interact with the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of CSR monetary performance.

This study analyzes listed companies in Oman’s capital market from 2016 to 2021, using pooled ordinary least squares and unique CSR performance measures such as budgeting and spending.

The study finds that companies with more expertise and frequent meetings are more likely to allocate a larger budget for CSR activities. However, this does not apply to larger boards or to independent directors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the effect of independent directors on CSR budgeting and spending is more pronounced, and boards with more expertise and meetings show a negative interaction with the pandemic. The interaction of board characteristics with COVID-19 in terms of CSR monetary performance varies depending on company size. Board independence and expertise show a significant reaction to COVID-19 infection and death cases when setting CSR budgeting and spending.

The findings of this study are stimulating, but stem from an emerging country with unique cultural and institutional characteristics. Methodological issues were also encountered during the analysis, so readers should exercise caution when applying the results to other settings.

This study highlights board involvement in deciding a company’s CSR investment, as it was believed that chief executive officers are considered responsible for CSR activities. Additionally, this research underscores the significance of incorporating the financial aspects of CSR into reporting.

This study examines the seldom explored relationship between corporate boards and CSR monetary aspects during regular and irregular times, offering theoretical and practical insights that benefit multiple stakeholders.

This study investigates the consequences of the key audit matter (KAM) disclosure requirement by considering two salient audit proxies: audit fees and audit report lag. This investigation is relevant because most auditors worldwide are required to expand their audit report including discussion on key matters faced in the audit engagement. However, the emerging literature on the implications of KAM is inconclusive.

Using a distinctive dataset of 601 year-observations for firms listed on the Omani capital market over 2012–2019, this study employs pooled panel data regression with robust standard error.

Results indicate that auditors increased their fees considerably during the period of KAM but substantially shortened audit report lag. Conversely, using the KAM period as a sample, the authors find marginal or insignificant evidence for the effect of the number of KAM on both proxies. In additional analyses, this study shows that entity-level risk KAM is associated with higher fees and shorter audit report lag, while KAM related to account-level risk does not have the same effect. Interestingly, it is observed that KAM disclosure is strongly associated with higher fees and high-quality audit even when the auditors issue their report in a shorter time.

This study contributes to the limited research examining the consequences of KAM in emerging markets. It is also the first to show that KAM is associated with shorter audit report lag.

Although the effect of culture on financial reporting practices has been addressed in earlier studies, the existing empirical evidence totally neglects an important dimension in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) markets: tribal culture. The authors fill this gap in the literature using Oman as the setting.

The authors collect data for 583 company-year observations for companies listed on the Omani capital market, 2007–2014. The authors run a two-way fixed effects panel data regression to test their hypothesis.

Tribal culture has a negative effect on financial reporting quality (FRQ), measured by both accrual-based and real earnings management. The findings are robust under a variety of sensitivity analyses. In additional analysis, the findings confirm that tribal culture negatively moderates the effectiveness of internal monitoring mechanisms and is associated with low-quality auditing. Further, the authors find tribal culture associated with delayed financial information.

To the authors' knowledge, the study makes several contributions to the literature because it is the first archival evidence linking tribal culture with FRQ. It is the first to show that the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on FRQ is moderated by tribal culture. The study has valuable implications for policymakers, regulators, boards of directors and auditors in GCC countries as well as in countries with similar cultures.

The worldwide spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has significant effects on financial markets and companies, causing an unprecedented level of uncertainty in reporting and auditing companies' financial statements. This study explores whether and how COVID-19 affects audit fees.

Using a sample of 268 firm-year observations from the Omani capital market between 2017 and 2020, the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with a robust standard error is applied to answer the research question of this study.

The authors find that the pandemic has a significant and positive association with audit fees and abnormal audit fees. This finding suggests that the threat of risk, complexity and legal liability circumstances resulting from the pandemic can be compensated by charging higher audit fees. In addition, the authors provide evidence that Big4 audit firms are those most responding to COVID-19 by charging higher audit fees. Finally, the authors conclude that large companies are less sensitive to the pandemic.

Users of financial reports and audit firms should anticipate changes in the audit efforts resulting in increased audit fees during COVID-19. Thus, this paper may guide practitioners and businesses in determining the audit fees and associated costs of any potential pandemic.

The study results are among the earliest empirical insights into the effect of COVID-19 on audit fees in Oman.

Auditors’ self-efficacy (SE) represents their level of confidence in improving their audit performance. This may be a crucial factor for auditors to perform effectively during the health crisis of COVID-19. This study aims to build on a social cognitive perspective to assess the SE of auditors during the coronavirus of 2019 (COVID-19) and to anticipate that mastery experience, verbal and social persuasion, vicarious experience, physiological and emotional states and virtual audit are determinants of auditors’ SE during COVID-19.

Based on data from Saudi Arabia, this study surveyed all auditors using an online questionnaire and collected 193 useful responses. Thus, this study analyzed the data using primary statistical tests and a structural equation model of partial least squares.

This study observes that auditors feel confident in their ability to perform audit activities as well during COVID-19 as at other times. This study also documents that VEs, physiological and emotional states and virtual audits play significant roles in SE. In further analyses, this study observes that auditors who are affiliated with big4 audit firms moderate the positive association between virtual audit and SE. All these results are verified under several econometrical appraisals and held constant.

This study provides a number of theoretical and practical implications.

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new challenges for auditors to provide high-quality audits. These challenges pose interesting questions about the ability of auditors to obtain audit evidence and ensure appropriate conclusions. In response to these questions, this paper aims to examine how self-efficacy affects the auditors’ effort and performance during COVID-19 and how remote audit proficiency helps them respond to these challenges, as reflected in more effort and high-quality performance.

To test the hypotheses, this study used a quantitative approach in which 193 Saudi auditors were surveyed and partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The authors demonstrated that self-efficacy is positively associated with the perceived audit effort and performance during the COVID-19 crisis. The results also showed that remote audit proficiency plays a significant role during COVID-19 as it can help auditors exert more effort and perform audit activities effectively. This study also found that remote audit mediates the association between self-efficacy and both effort and performance during COVID-19. These results are also asserted under several robust analyses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, these findings provide the first evidence on the effect of COVID-19 on auditors and have implications for both theory and practice.