Audit Team Attributes Matter: How Diversity Affects Audit Quality
利用四大会计师事务所中两家的内部数据，研究审计团队在人员构成（如职级、教育背景、性别）上的多样性如何影响审计质量和效率，并考察团队任期的作用。
How audit teams are structured and function plays a crucial role in determining the level of audit service quality. Despite this claim, little empirical research has been conducted on this effect. Using private data from two of the Big 4 audit firms, we fill this gap and document how diversity of audit teams influences audit quality. By combining the existing work in psychology and sociology with that in auditing, we develop our model by arguing that teams are composed not simply of single auditors but of sub-teams of individuals whose various combinations affect team performance. Starting from this premise, we study how the diversity of audit teams in terms of the different mix of work assigned to staff, seniors, managers, and partners influences audit quality and how this effect varies depending upon years of tenure. We also show that the proportion of leading auditors characterized by a common educational background and the percentage of female leading auditors affect audit quality. As an additional analysis, we examine how team diversity affects audit efficiency. The same elements found relevant for audit quality also affect audit efficiency.