【作者】 朱磊；

【导师】 蔡春；

【作者基本信息】 西南财经大学 ， 会计学， 2022， 博士

【摘要】 注册会计师行业服务于资本市场和经济发展,并发挥着重要的角色。审计师是否秉承独立、客观、公正原则对企业财务会计信息进行审计与鉴证,不仅关乎委托方和外部投资者的利益,更关系到社会公众的利益。会计师事务所内部治理是会计师事务所执业风险防范和执业质量控制的重要保障,其科学性和有效性直接影响到会计师事务所的服务质量。中注协先后发布了《会计师事务所内部治理指南》、《注册会计师行业发展规划(2021-2025)》等相关文件,强调会计师事务所合伙人治理的重要性,倡导树立“人合、事合、心合、志合”的治理理念,旨在为资本市场健康发展提供优质服务。在特殊普通合伙制下,合伙人既是所有者也是经营者,其执业理念、价值观和行为准则等对会计师事务所的发展具有重要的影响,从而使得合伙人治理成为会计师事务所内部治理机制的重中之重。从审计行业发展来看,行业发展过程中所面临诸多问题,包括会计师事务所人员流动性高、合伙人矛盾突出等问题,均与合伙人治理密切相关,使得能否实现有效的合伙人治理已成为制约部分会计师事务所发展的一个“瓶颈”。因此,构建科学完善的合伙人治理机制,平衡合伙人权责利之间的关系,在此基础上形成“人合”和“智合”的合伙文化,引导合伙人的行为符合会计师事务所利益最大化是合伙人治理的关键。然而,已有文献主要基于会计师事务所、分所以及审计师个人特征来探讨对审计质量的影响,却鲜有学者系统研究会计师事务所合伙人治理对审计质量的影响。由此可见,无论是从公众利益维护、经济秩序规范、资本市场稳定,还是基于行业自身高质量发展的角度,提高会计师事务所合伙人治理水平是注册会计师行业发展的紧迫课题。基于此,本文以特殊普通合伙制会计师事务所合伙人为研究对象,以自主治理理论和委托代理理论为依据,从新晋合伙人、合伙人规模以及合伙人股权配置模式三个角度,考察合伙人治理是否以及如何影响“人合”与“智合”,从而作用于审计质量。本研究包括以下七个章节:第一章为导论。本章首先论述本文的研究背景和研究意义,在此基础上明确研究目标与主要研究内容,接着阐述研究思路和研究方法,最后总结预期贡献与创新。本章是本研究的整体规划章节,对全文起到提纲挈领的作用。第二章为制度背景与文献综述。本章主要包括两个部分,一是制度背景分析,二是文献综述。在制度背景分析部分,本章回顾了会计师事务所“做大做强”战略、会计师事务所特殊普通合伙转制以及相关法律制度,为后续开展合伙人治理研究交代了制度背景。在文献综述部分,围绕本文所研究问题,本章从会计师事务所内、外部治理与审计质量的相关研究,以及合伙人与审计质量的相关研究等角度对已有文献进行系统梳理和归纳。在此基础上,归纳会计师事务所内部治理、合伙人治理的研究现状以及对审计质量影响的基本观点,并分析现有相关文献存在的不足,以凸显本文的研究契机和理论贡献,为本文开展后续研究奠定文献基础。第三章为会计师事务所合伙人治理与审计质量的理论分析框架。本章首先对会计师事务所合伙人和审计质量的概念进行界定,并阐述会计师事务所合伙人治理的构成要素,从而确定本文的研究对象和研究边界。接着,本章通过对比分析特殊普通合伙企业与公司制企业的区别,从而凸显研究特殊普通合伙制下的会计师事务所合伙人治理的必要性和特殊性。最后,基于自主治理理论、委托代理理论、社会交换理论以及高阶理论,本章阐述了会计师事务所合伙人治理作用于审计质量的影响机制。第四章为新晋合伙人与审计质量关系研究。审计师晋升为合伙人为会计师事务所可持续发展提供了动力和源泉,关乎会计师事务所长远发展的大计。审计师在晋升为合伙人后行为是否发生变化?研究发现,审计师在晋升为合伙人之后,审计质量会显著下降,表现在审计师对客户风险的容忍度增加。合伙人教育背景、性别、会计师事务所一体化管理程度、分所数量对审计师晋升后的行为有显著的调节作用,具体表现为,当合伙人毕业于名校、合伙人性别为男性、会计师事务所一体化管理程度较低、会计师事务所分所数量较多时,审计师在晋升为合伙人后对客户的风险容忍度会更高。在经过一系列稳健性检验后,实证结果保持不变。本章实证结果表明,审计师在晋升为合伙人的初期对客户的风险容忍度往往较高。第五章为合伙人规模与审计质量关系研究。合伙人既是会计师事务所的所有者也是经营者,合伙人规模是否越大越好?是否存在最优的合伙人规模?研究发现,会计师事务所合伙人规模与审计质量显著负相关,表明合伙人规模并不是越大越好。此外,研究发现会计师事务所并不存在最优的合伙人规模。当会计师事务所一体化管理程度较高、存在大股东合伙人以及合伙人的性别为女性时,合伙人规模与审计质量之间的负相关关系会被削弱。进一步研究发现,合伙人与注册会计师之间的配置对审计质量有显著的正向影响,即一位合伙人配置的注册会计师越多,审计质量往往越高。在经过一系列稳健性检验后,实证结果保持不变。本章实证结果表明,会计师事务所合伙人规模并非越大越好,而注册会计师与合伙人的配比越高越有利于审计质量的提升。第六章为合伙人股权配置模式与审计质量关系研究。合伙人股权如何配置关乎到会计师事务所治理效率。研究发现,会计师事务所采取平均股权与审计质量显著负相关,表明合伙人采取平均股权对审计质量有显著的负向影响。合伙人规模、执行事务合伙人数量以及会计师事务所声誉对合伙人股权设置方式与审计质量的关系有显著的调节作用,具体表现为,当合伙人规模较大、执行事务合伙人较多、会计师事务所声誉较高时,会计师事务所采取平均股权与审计质量负相关关系更显著。此外,多层股权结构对审计质量具有积极作用。在经过一系列稳健性检验后,实证结果保持不变。本章实证结果表明,会计师事务所实行平均的合伙人股权配置模式不利于保障审计质量。第七章为研究结论与政策建议。本章主要包括三个部分:首先,归纳与总结前文的实证分析所获得的结论;其次,基于研究结论对审计相关法律修订、审计行业监管以及会计师事务所提供政策建议;最后,分析与讨论本文研究存在的局限性,并对未来关于会计师事务所合伙人治理相关研究提出研究展望。本文的研究贡献有如下三点:(1)本文对会计师事务所内部治理机制的相关研究进行了拓展。本文从合伙人层面进行归集,强调会计师事务所合伙人治理对审计质量的重要影响,并提供了基于会计师事务所合伙人视角下的分析框架。先前文献主要是基于会计师事务所内部治理的视角,如会计师事务所转制、薪酬分配与激励制度、风险与控制等进行分析。本文则另辟蹊径,将会计师事务所合伙人作为研究对象,基于自治理理论和委托代理理论等进行分析与讨论,立足于特殊普通合伙制会计师事务所“人合”和“智合”特征,从审计师晋升为合伙人、合伙人规模以及合伙人股权配置模式等角度剖析会计师事务所合伙人治理对审计质量的影响,从而构建出合伙人治理与审计质量的理论分析框架。(2)本文是对Lennox and Wu(2018)倡导进一步打开合伙人治理“黑箱”(black box)呼吁的回应。本文通过手工收集合伙人治理相关数据,对合伙人治理与审计质量的关系进行了系统的实证研究。先前的文献对会计师事务所的内外部治理机制进行了理论分析,鲜有文献通过大样本实证检验会计师事务所合伙人治理对审计质量的作用机制。本文通过手工收集新晋合伙人、合伙人规模以及合伙人股权配置的相关数据,通过大样本实证分析从合伙人视角揭示了会计师事务所内部治理机制与审计质量的关系,为进一步完善会计师事务所内部治理提供了实证经验证据。(3)本文的研究对注册会计师行业政策制定者、监管者以及会计师事务所具有重要的启示意义。首先,对于新修订《中华人民共和国注册会计师法》征求意见稿的建议,应该在本次修订中对注册会计师的法律责任给出清晰的厘定,从法律责任的厘定上为会计师事务所治理提供法理基础。其次,对于监管者对会计师事务所的评价方面,对会计师事务所合伙人规模应当理性看待,综合考虑合伙人规模对“人合”与“智合”具有非对称性影响。最后,对于会计师事务所提升治理效率而言,强化对合伙人群体的治理,如对新晋合伙人、合伙人规模以及合伙人股权配置方面进行有针对性的提出治理策略,实现“人合”与“智合”的最优合伙人治理效果,从而为经济发展提供高质量专业服务。更多还原

【Abstract】 The CPA industry plays an important role in serving the capital market and economic development.Whether auditors adhere to the principles of independence,objectivity and justice to audit and verify the financial and accounting information of enterprises is not only related to the interests of the principal and external investors,but also related to the interests of the public.The internal governance of accounting firms is an important guarantee for accounting firms’ practice risk prevention and practice quality control,and its scientificity and effectiveness directly affect the service quality of accounting firms.The CICPA has successively issued relevant documents such as “Certified Public Accountants Internal Governance Guidelines”,“Certified Public Accountants Industry Development Planning(2021-2025)” and other relevant documents,which emphasizes the importance of audit partner management,advocating set the management idea of“harmonious with people,things,heart and ambitions”,to provides the high-quality service for capital market.Under the special general partnership,partners act as both owners and operators,and their practice philosophy,values and behavior rules take an important impact on the development of accounting firms,making audit partner governance an important part of the internal governance mechanism of accounting firms.From the perspective of the development of the audit industry,many problems faced in the process of CPA industry development,including the high turnover of auditors and prominent partnership conflicts,are closely related to audit partner governance.Thus,whether to achieve effective partner governance has become a“bottleneck” restricting the development of some accounting firms.Therefore,balancing the relationship between partners’ responsibilities and rights,designing a scientific and effective partner governance mechanism,forming a healthy and sustainable partnership culture,and guiding accounting firms to improve their practice quality are the keys to partner governance.However,the prior literatures mainly explore the impact of accounting firms,branches and auditors on the audit quality,but few literatures systematically study the impact of audit partner governance on audit quality.Therefore,whether from the perspective of public interest maintenance,economic order regulation,capital market stability,or based on the healthy development of the industry itself,exploring how to improve the audit partner governance level of accounting firms is an urgent issue for the development of the certified public accountant industry.Thus,selecting the partners of the special general partnership accounting firm as the research object,and based on the theory of self-governance and principal-agent theory,from the perspectives of new partners,partner scale and partner equity allocation model,this paper examines whether and how partner governance affects audit quality through “harmony among the partners”or “harmony among intelligent”.There are seven chapters as follows:The first chapter is introduction.In this chapter,I firstly emphasize the research background and significance of this paper,then define the research purpose and research content,next put forward research ideas and research methods,and finally summarize the expected contributions and innovations.This chapter is the overall planning chapter of this research.The second chapter is the institutional background and literature review.This chapter mainly includes two parts,one is the institution background analysis,the other is the literature review.In the part of institutional background analysis,I review the accounting firm’s strategy of making it bigger and stronger and the accounting firm’s special general partnership transformation,explaining the institutional background for the follow-up research on partner governance.In the literature review part,I systematically sort out and summarize the existing literature from the perspectives of internal and external governance of accounting firms to show the impact of audit firm governance on audit quality,as well as related research on the relationship between audit partners and audit quality.On this basis,it can be helpful to understand the research status of internal governance and partner governance of accounting firms,and summarize the shortcomings of existing related literature,so as to highlight the research opportunities and theoretical contributions of this paper.The third chapter is the theoretical analysis framework of audit partner governance and audit quality.Firstly,I define the concept of accounting firm partner and audit quality,and expound the constituent elements of audit partner governance,so as to determine the research object and research boundary of this paper.Then,I compare and analyze the difference between the special general partnership and the corporate enterprise,so as to highlight the necessity and particularity of studying the audit partner governance under the special general partnership.Finally,based on the theory of autonomous governance,principal-agent theory,social exchange theory,and higher-order theory,I expound that audit partner governance takes effect on audit quality by the “harmony among the partners” or “harmony among intelligent”.The fourth chapter is about whether new promotion partners are propensity to provide higher audit quality.The promotion of auditors to partners provides the driving force and source for the sustainable development of accounting firms.Whether the auditor’s behavior has changed when being promoted to partner? I find that when an auditor is promoted to a partner,the audit quality will decrease significantly,which is reflected in the increase in the auditor’s tolerance for clients’ earnings management.Compared with female auditors,male auditors show higher risk tolerance after promotion;auditors who graduated from prestigious schools are more overconfident after promotion.What’s more,the higher the level of integration of accounting firms,the lower the risk tolerance of auditors after promotion;with more accounting firm branches,auditors are more tolerant of risk after promotion.After a series of robustness tests,the empirical results remain unchanged.The empirical results of this chapter show that auditors tend to have higher risk tolerance for clients in the early stage of promotion to partners.The fifth chapter is to explore the impact of the partner scale on audit quality.Partners act as both the owner and operator of the accounting firm.Is the larger the partner size,the better? Is there an optimal partner size? I find that the size of partners in accounting firms is significantly negatively correlated with audit quality,indicating that the larger the partner size,the lower the quality.In addition,I find that there is no optimal partner size for accounting firms.Further analyze shows that the configuration between partners and certified public accountants has a significant positive impact on audit quality,that is,the more certified public accountants a partner configures,the higher the audit quality tends to be.After a series of robustness tests,the empirical results remain unchanged.The empirical results of this chapter show that the larger the partner scale of the accounting firm is,the lower the quality,and the higher the ratio of partners to certified public accountants,the higher the audit quality.The sixth chapter is focus on the impact of the partner’s equity structure allocation mode on audit quality.How partners’ equity is allocated is related to the governance efficiency of accounting firms.I find that the average equity taken by accounting firms is significantly negatively correlated with audit quality,indicating that the average equity allocation has a significant negative impact on audit quality.The size of partners,the number of managing partners and the reputation of accounting firms take a significant moderating effect on the relationship between partner equity setting and audit quality.Specifically,the negative impact of average equality of partners on audit quality is more pronounced when audit firms are with larger partner size,more than one lead partners,and higher reputation.In addition,multi-tier ownership structure has a positive effect on audit quality.After a series of robustness tests,the empirical results remain unchanged.The empirical results of this chapter show that the average partner ownership structure in accounting firms is not conducive to ensuring audit quality.Conclusions and enlightenment of this study are in the seventh chapter.In this chapter,I mainly review the research conclusions of this paper systematically,and put forward relevant policy suggestions.At the same time,I also analyze the insufficiency of this research,and propose possible future research directions.Research contributions of this paper are as follows:First,this paper expands the relevant research on the internal governance from accounting firm level into the partner level.This paper emphasizes the important influence of partner governance on audit quality,and provides a new analytical framework from the perspective of audit partners.The previous literature is mainly based on the perspective of internal governance of accounting firms,such as accounting firm transformation,salary distribution and incentive system,risk and control,etc..This paper takes a different approach by taking the partners as the research object,to analyze the impact of audit partner governance on audit quality from the perspectives of auditor promotion to partner,partner scale,and partner equity structure,thereby constructing a theoretical analysis framework for audit partner governance.Second,this paper is a response to Lennox and Wu(2018)calling for further opening the “black box” of audit partner governance.This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of partner governance on audit quality by using manually collecting data.Previous literatures have carried out theoretical analysis on the internal and external governance of accounting firms,however few of them use archival data to empirically examines the mechanism of partner governance.By manually collecting relevant data on partner promotion,partner size,and partner equity allocation,I reveal the relationship between the internal governance mechanism of accounting firms and audit quality from the perspective of partners,which provides empirical evidence for improving the audit quality of accounting firms.Third,there are some potential implications for the CPA industry policy makers,regulators and accounting firms based on the results of this paper.First of all,for the proposal of the new revision of Law of the People’s Republic of China on Certified Public Accountants,the legal responsibility of the CPA should be clearly determined in this revision,which can provide a legal basis for the governance of accounting firms.Secondly,with regard to the supervisor’s evaluation of accounting firms,the scale of partners in accounting firms should be viewed rationally,as the scale of partners has an asymmetric impact on “harmony among the partners” or“harmony among intelligent”.Finally,for accounting firms,to improve governance efficiency,strengthen the governance of partner groups,such as implementing targeted governance strategies for new partners,partner scale,and partner equity allocation,are benefit for achieving the goal of “harmony among the partners” or“harmony among intelligent”,so as to provide high-quality professional services for economic development.更多还原