Opening Up the “Black Box” of Audit Firms: The Effects of Audit Partner Ownership on Audit Adjustments
研究了审计事务所中股权所有权对两类合伙人（业务质量审查人和审计项目合伙人）审计调整行为的不同影响，发现持股增加会促使审查人更严格监控审计质量，但对项目合伙人则无此效果。
ABSTRACT Audit firms need to provide high‐quality audits but they also need to please their clients. We argue that these conflicting incentives become manifest when comparing the incentive effects of equity ownership on engagement quality (EQ) reviewers and audit engagement partners. We predict that EQ reviewers monitor audit quality more closely when they hold greater ownership. In contrast, we expect that equity ownership has conflicting effects on the incentives of engagement partners because they need to please their clients as well as provide high‐quality audits. Consistent with these predictions, we find that the associations between audit adjustments and partner equity ownership are (1) significantly positive for EQ reviewers, (2) significantly negative or insignificant for audit engagement partners, and (3) significantly more positive for EQ reviewers than engagement partners. Our findings suggest that larger ownership stakes motivate EQ reviewers to monitor audit quality more closely, whereas larger ownership stakes do not motivate engagement partners to deliver higher quality audits.