계속감사기간이 내부회계관리제도 검토의견에 미치는 영향

초록

With the enactment of regulations related to Internal Accounting Control Systems according to the External Audit Law in 2003, from the fiscal year after April 1, 2004, the review on Internal Accounting Control Systems by the auditor is being attached to the audit report. Compared to the fact that in the US, regulations are set so that the auditor's opinions are expressed for the internal control by the auditor, in Korea, regulations mandate the auditor to express his/her review engagement at a level of negative assurance. In other words, in Korea, the legal responsibility of the auditor's review on Internal Accounting Control Systems is less than that of the auditor's opinion. Therefore, there is a high possibility that other factors may affect the review engagement of the auditor's review on Internal Accounting Control Systems. In this context, we examine the effects of audit tenure on the Internal Accounting Control Systems review. If the auditor's expertise improve as the audit tenure is longer, the auditor will find and report weaknesses in the Internal Accounting Control Systems. On the other hand if the auditor's independence worsen as the audit tenure is longer, the auditor will not report weaknesses in the Internal Accounting Control Systems. The auditor's review on Internal Accounting Control Systems have lower legal responsibilities unlike auditor's opinions on financial statements, it is expected that the longer the audit tenure, the lower the possibility of reporting weaknesses in the Internal Accounting Control Systems become. The results showed that the longer the audit tenure, the less likely it was to report weaknesses in the Internal Accounting Control Systems. In addition, after making analyses by categorizing the weakness in Internal Accounting Control Systems to material weaknesses and significant deficiency, it was evident that the longer the audit tenure, the less material weaknesses were reported by the auditor. Thus, the results of this study can be interpreted as a result of the auditor entrenchment hypothesis where the audit quality decreases with the damaged independence of the auditor when the audit tenure becomes longer in expressing the review on Internal Accounting Control Systems. Considering the fact that the auditor's review on Internal Accounting Control Systems have lower legal responsibilities, it is expected that changes in the audit quality according to the audit tenure will be seen more clearly in the review on Internal Accounting Control Systems. Hence, the results of this study will provide an additional perception in the current situation where there are conflicting claims in the auditor expertise hypothesis and auditor entrenchment hypothesis. This study also suggests the need to begin discussions on in improving the Internal Accounting Control Systems. In other words, this study suggests the need to modify the current review engagement of Internal Accounting Control Systems to auditor's opinions. Despite such contributions, the limitations of this study are as follows. First, due to the lack of samples reporting the weaknesses of Internal Accounting Control Systems from 2005 to 2011, there is a possibility that biases may have occurred in the results of this study. In order to overcome such limitation, however, triple number of matched samples were selected to verify the hypothesis, from which the same result was confirmed. Second, due to the possibility that opinion shopping may have occurred for the company being audited, there is a need to take caution in interpreting the results of this study. Third, due to the possibility that the corporate governance may affect the audit tenure, further research about the corporate governance, the audit tenure and the review of Internal Accounting Control Systems seems to be required.

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