jenkins and vermeer - 2013 - audit firm rotation and audit quality - evidence from academic research [mafr]

Audit firm rotation and audit
quality: evidence from
academic research
David S. Jenkins and Thomas E. Vermeer
Department of Accounting & MIS, University of Delaware,
Newark, Delaware, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a succinct overview of academic research that has
examined audit firm rotation both in the USA and in other countries.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors outline the unresolved nature of academic research
on audit firm rotation, review recent literature, discuss why academics have been unable to resolve this
issue and offer suggestions for improving subsequent research in the area.
Findings – Overall, the collective evidence is inconclusive at best; with earlier studies generally
finding mixed results and more recent studies indicating that audit quality generally goes through two
distinct phases during the auditor-client relationship, the “auditor learning” and “auditor closeness”
phases.
Originality/value – Given the importance of the issue, this article provides an overview of academic
research that has examined audit firm rotation, discusses why academics have been unable to resolve
this issue, and provides suggestions on how academics and practitioners can work together to enhance
the quality of future research.
Keywords Accounting research, Auditing, Auditor tenure, Auditor-client relationship,
Mandatory auditor rotation
Paper type Literature review
Introduction
Audit firm rotation as a means of enhancing auditor independence has been scrutinized
and debated by accounting regulators, practitioners, and academics for decades. Most
recently, the US Congress strongly considered such a policy in drafting the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), but instead settled in favor of mandating five-year partner
rotation. The issue was formally resurrected again in August 2011, when the US Public
Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) issued a concept release to solicit
comments on mandatory audit firm rotation, with the PCAOB particularly interested in

audit terms of ten years or greater (JOA, 2011). As suggested in the concept release,
there is much disagreement regarding the viability/merits of audit firm rotation.
On one side, investors are generally in favor of a rotation requirement as a “powerful
antidote” to auditor conflicts of interests which they believe will significantly diminish
the incentives of auditors to placate management and will provide a needed fresh look
(PCAOB, 2011). In contrast, the business community generally believes it carries
significant increased audit costs, undermines the role of the audit committee, decreases
the quality of audits, and potentially increases the likelihood of opinion shopping
(AICPA, 2011; IIA, 2012; PCAOB, 2011)[1].
Regardless of the outcome of the US PCAOB concept release process, audit firm
rotation for public companies is not new and will continue to be a topic of public debate
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1030-9616.htm
Accounting Research Journal
Vol. 26 No. 1, 2013
pp. 75-84
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1030-9616
DOI 10.1108/ARJ-11-2012-0087
Audit firm
rotation
75
for years to come. In addition, the PCAOB’s discussions may trigger states
governments within the USA to consider audit firm rotation for nonprofits and public
companies may consider voluntary audit firm rotation as a positive signal to the
financial markets[2]. Given the importance of this issue, this article:
.
discusses the regulatory background of audit firm rotation in the USA and other
countries;
.

provides an overview of academic research that has examined audit firm
rotation;
.
discusses why academics have been unable to resolve this issue; and
.
provides suggestions on how academics and practitioners can work together to
enhance the quality of future research.
This overview should be useful to practitioners as they discuss this issue within their
firms, with their clients, and the larger business and investor communities.
Regulatory background of audit firm rotation in the USA and other
countries
USA
For more than 35 years, US regulators have considered a regulatory limitation on audit
firm tenure. In 1977, the US Senate Committee on Government Operations, Chaired by
Senator Metcalf, published the Metcalf Report. In this report, the Committee noted that
a long association between an audit firm and a client may lead to such a close
identification of each interest that truly independent action by the audit firm becomes
difficult. The report further noted that:
[ ] one alternative is a mandatory change of accountants after a given period of time, or after
any finding by the SEC that the accounting firm failed to exercise independent action to
protect investors and the public (Metcalf Report, 1977).
In the following year, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’
Commission on Auditor’s Responsibility, better known as the Cohen Commission,
reached a different conclusion regarding audit firm rotation. The commission
recommended against mandatory audit firm rotation because the:
[ ] cost of mandatory rotation would be high and the benefits that financial statement users
might gain would be offset by the loss of benefits that resulted from a continuing relationship
(Cohen Commission, 1977).
Instead, the Cohen Commission recommended that the audit committee is in the best
position to determine when rotation is appropriate.

The issue of mandatory audit firm rotation in the USA was fairly dormant until late
2001. In fact, the Treadway Commission, a private-sector initiative of the American
Institute of Certified Public Accountants, American Accounting Association, Financial
Executives Institute, Institute of Internal Auditors, and National Association of
Accountants, issued the Report of the National Commission on Fraudulent Financial
Reporting in 1987. In this report, the commission did not address mandatory audit firm
rotation; rather it recommended that audit firms should recognize and control the
organizational and individual pressures that potentially reduce audit quality. Further,
in 1994, the SEC was commissioned by US Congress to study auditor independence
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and provide any recommendations for legislation. In this staff report, the SEC indicated
that the profession’s requirement for a periodic change in the engagement partner in
charge, especially coupled with the requirement for second partner reviews, provides
a sufficient opportunity for bringing a fresh viewpoint to the audit without creating the
significant costs and risks associated with changing accounting firms that were
identified by the Cohen Commission (SEC, 1994).
In late 2001, with the failure of Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing, the issue of
mandatory audit firm rotation was once again formally considered by regulators.
In fact, the US Congress strongly considered such a policy in drafting the SOX, but
rather asked the US General Accounting Office (GAO) to study the potential effects of
mandatory audit firm rotation. The GAO issued its report in 2003 suggesting that
several years experience with the implementation of SOX is needed before determining
if additional requirements are necessary to enhance auditor independence and audit
quality. In 2011, the PCAOB issued a concept release seeking comments on mandatory
audit firm rotation, given that sufficient time had passed since the implementation of
SOX and several hundred cases involving what they determined to be audit failures
were discovered during annual inspections of the largest audit firms for eight years.
Australia

Besides the USA, other countries are considering mandatory audit firm rotation.
In December 2012, Greg Medcraft, Chairman of the Australian Securities and
Investment Commission, noted that they found a 30 percent increase in the failure of
auditors to detect material misstatements in public company financial statements for
the 18 months ended June 30, 2012. Given this deterioration, Mr Medcraft noted that he
will recommend mandatory audit firm rotation to the Australian Government if
standards drop further, to strengthen the present requirement that audit partners
change every seven years (Durkin, 2012).
Europe
Similar to Australia, the European Union (EU) is also concerned with auditor
independence. Following the EU’s three billion bailout of banks during the credit crises,
Michael Barnier, Internal Markets Commissioner of the European Commission,
suggested that “mandatory audit firm rotation would boost the quality of audit,
shattering the perverse pressure on partners not to lose long-standing clients”
(Orlik, 2011, p. 1). Mr Barnier further noted that “auditor independence is neither assured
nor demonstrable, and infrequent firm rotation has deprived audit of its ethos:
professional skepticism” (Orlik, 2011, p. 1).
Academic research examining audit firm rotation in the USA
Since audit firm rotation is generally not required in the USA, academic research
examining audit firm rotation in the USA has been primarily limited to an environment
of voluntary auditor changes. Further, since companies change auditors rather
infrequently in the USA, many studies addressing mandatory rotation have examined
whether and how the duration of the auditor-client relationship (i.e. auditor tenure)
affects the quality of audits. Although these auditor tenure studies do not directly
examine mandatory audit firm rotation, Carey and Simnett (2006) suggest that auditor
tenure studies do examine the fundamental underlying objective of mandatory audit
Audit firm
rotation
77
firm rotation, i.e. that after a long period of tenure, continuing relationships between

a client and audit firm may impact a firm’s independence, and time may deteriorate
a firm’s ability for critical appraisal. Thus, researchers suggest that the results from
auditor tenure studies can shed light on the efficacy of a policy of mandatory audit firm
rotation to increase audit quality.
Given that audit quality is generally unobservable from publicly available
information, researchers have developed proxies for audit quality. These proxies have
focused on either financial statement measures such as material misstatements (Carcello
and Nagy, 2004), discretionary accruals ( Johnson et al., 2002; Gul et al., 2007), and
restatements (Myers et al., 2003); or audit reporting failures (Geiger and Raghunandan,
2002) (Table I)[3]. In addition to examining proxies for audit quality, researchers have
also examined the effects of audit firm tenure from an investor perspective. Specifically,
these studies have examined whether a relationship exists between audit firm tenure
and the cost of borrowing (Mansi et al., 2004), earnings response coefficients (Ghosh and
Moon, 2005), and equity risk premiums (Boone et al., 2008) (Table II)[4].
Earlier studies on voluntary rotation generally model the relation between auditor
tenure and audit quality as a linear relation, such that audit quality either strictly
increases or decreases (or has no relation) over time, and have generally found mixed
results. More recent studies have allowed for the possibility of a nonlinear relation. For
example, Boone et al. (2008) examine the relation between auditor tenure and
client-specific equity risk premiums and document a nonlinear relation. Specifically,
they find that the equity risk premium initially decreases as tenure increases, but for
long tenures the equity risk premium increases with additional years of tenure.
Meanwhile, Davis et al. (2009) find a similar nonlinear relation and demonstrate that
clients of short and long tenure auditors are more likely to use discretionary accruals to
meet or beat earnings forecasts relative to clients of medium tenure firms. In a similar
vein, Jenkins and Velury (2008) examine the relation between auditor tenure and
reporting conservatism and report similar findings.
In general, these “nonlinear” studies indicate that audit quality generally goes through
two distinct phases during the auditor-client relationship. During the early years referred
to as the “auditor learning” phase, auditors become more familiar with the client and audit

quality tends to improve. Then, at some point when the relationship reaches a certain
threshold referred to as the “auditor closeness” phase, audit quality begins to deteriorate
as the auditor presumably becomes more complacent and experiences greater challenges
to objectivity and independence. This demonstrated nonlinearity likely explains the
mixed results found in earlier studies; however these recent findings get us no closer
to resolving the mandatory rotation issue as the results indicate that there may be merit to
both sides of the argument.
Academic research examining audit firm rotation outside the USA
Although academic studies in the USA have been primarily limited to voluntary
auditor tenure studies, academic researchers have examined audit firm and partner
rotation in other countries, such as Australia, China, Korea, Spain, and Taiwan, where
mandatory rotation is required to different extents. Kim and Yi (2009) examine the
impact of audit firm tenure on audit quality in Korea where mandatory audit firm
rotation is required for problematic firms[5]. The authors find that firms with
mandatory auditor changes report significantly lower discretionary accruals compared
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Publication Auditor tenure variable Audit quality measure
Academic operationalization of audit
quality measure
Myers et al. (2003)
Stanley and DeZoort
(2009)
Audit firm tenure (number of consecutive
years the firm has retained auditor)
Accounting restatements Correction of a previously issued financial
statement, usually because of an
accounting irregularity or
misrepresentation caused by an error or

fraud
Geiger and Raghunandan
(2002)
Natural log of audit firm tenure Auditor reporting failures Client bankruptcy with no prior going
concern modified audit opinion
Johnson et al. (2002)
Gul et al. (2007)
Audit firm tenure
Natural log of audit firm tenure
Discretionary accruals Total accounting accruals less
nondiscretionary accruals (business
conditions, such as growth and length of
operating cycle, that naturally create and
destroy accruals). Nondiscretionary
accruals are estimated using a regression
model
Carcello and Nagy (2004) Dichotomous variables for short (three
years or less) and long (nine years or more)
audit firm tenure
Material misstatement Company and/or its officers charged by
the SEC with a violation of Rule 10(b) – of
the 1934 Securities Exchange Act in an
Accounting and Auditing Enforcement
Release
Carey and Simnett (2006) Audit partner tenure using dichotomous
variables for short (two years or less) and
long (more than seven years) partner
tenure
Going-concern opinions
Abnormal working capital accruals

(AWCA)
Meeting/missing earnings
benchmarks
Likelihood of issuing going-concern
opinion for distressed companies
Difference between realized and expected
working capital (based on working capital
to sales ratio)
Small loss and small earnings decrease
avoidance
Table I.
Audit quality measures
as operationalized in
audit firm tenure studies
Audit firm
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79
to firms with voluntary auditor changes, suggesting that mandatory audit firm
rotation improves audit quality. In contrast, Firth et al. (2012) examine the impact of
both mandatory and voluntary audit firm rotation under different regulatory
environments in China. Using an auditor’s propensity to issue a modified audit opinion
as a proxy for audit quality, Firth et al. (2012) find that mandatory audit firm rotation
has a limited impact on audit quality, with the effect restricted to firms located in less
developed regions.[6]
Although Australia currently does not have mandatory audit firm rotation,
Australia provides a unique experimental setting for academic researchers because,
unlike the USA, Australia requires that the lead auditor personally sign the audit
report, hence allowing researchers to track changes in the audit partner from year to
year. Using this unique setting, Carey and Simnett (2006) examine the association
between audit quality and long audit partner tenure in Australia. The authors find

a lower propensity to issue a going concern modified opinion and some evidence of just
meeting or missing earnings benchmarks for long tenure observations; suggesting that
audit quality deteriorates with long partner tenure[7]. Ryken et al. (2007) also examine
the rotation practices before and after the implementation of mandatory rotation of lead
and audit review partners in Australia. The authors find that the introduction of
mandatory rules after 2005 significantly reduced the incidence of long partner tenure;
with auditors in locations outside Australia’s three major cities more likely to have
longer audit partner tenure than those located in the major cities. The authors suggest
that Australia should consider the need for reasonable exemptions to mandatory
rotation requirements given the higher costs of partner rotation to smaller firms and to
firms in remote locations. Given that the lead auditor must personally sign the audit
report in Australia, Chapple and Hossain (2011) also examine the Australian
experience with the mandatory audit partner requirements. The authors find that
58 percent of Australian companies had to change the lead audit partner because of the
mandated change after 2005 and this change impacted Big 4 and non-Big 4 audit firms
fairly equally. Overall, similar to studies of firms in the USA, collective evidence from
international studies on audit firm and partner rotation is inconclusive at best.
Publication Auditor tenure variable
Investor perception
measure
Academic operationalization
of investor perception measure
Mansi et al.
(2004)
Audit firm tenure (number of
consecutive years the firm has
retained auditor)
Cost of borrowing Cost of debt (interest rate on
debt capital) and/or debt
quality (debt rating from

ratings agencies)
Ghosh and
Moon (2005)
Audit firm tenure (number of
consecutive years the firm has
retained auditor)
Earnings response
coefficient (ERC)
Estimate of the change in a
company’s stock price from
the information provided in its
earnings announcement
Boone et al.
(2008)
Audit firm tenure in both
years and years
2
(nonlinear
model)
Equity risk premium The excess return that an
individual stock provides over
a risk-free rate, with the size of
the premium positively
varying with the risk in a
particular stock
Table II.
Investor perception
measures as
operationalized in audit
firm tenure studies

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Future direction
Given the unresolved nature of academic research on audit firm rotation both in the USA
and internationally, the logical next step is to examine where to go from here. In order to
do so, it seems prudent to discuss why existing research has been unable to resolve the
issue. First, as noted previously, audit quality is not directly observable and has largely
been measured by various characteristics of reported earnings and/or investor
perceptions. While necessary to this point because of data limitations, doing so introduces
measurement error to the models as a variety of factors, outside of audit quality, can affect
earnings characteristics and investor perceptions. Second, while the literature has
identified important auditor characteristics, such as auditor learning and auditor
closeness which are purported to affect audit quality, a much better understanding of
how these qualities manifest in audit quality is needed. The complex nature of the
auditor-client relationship requires a finer measure to capture these qualities than simply
the number of years an auditor has audited a particular client[8]. Finally, and most likely
due to data and measurement limitations, existing research has focused almost
exclusively on evaluating the potential benefits/detriments of audit firm rotation on audit
quality. Little to nothing substantive has been done to balance these audit quality effects
with associated costs of switching auditors, which has been the primary argument used
to refute the merits of a policy of mandatory rotation.
We believe the common element that can help solve these weaknesses is increased
input from practitioners. For example, advanced behavioral studies with more
knowledgeable subjects (i.e. experienced practitioners) could compensate for limitations
regarding observable audit quality[9]. In addition, input from practitioners related to if
and how auditor tenure manifests in auditor characteristics such as auditor learning and
auditor closeness could provide better model specifications than simply counting the
number of consecutive years an auditor has audited a client. Finally, practitioner input
regarding the identification and measurement of costs associated with auditor rotation

could help balance current research that is focused on benefits/detriments of rotation on
audit quality.
Summary and conclu sion
Overall, we feel that existing research and related policy decisions on audit firm
rotation have reached an impasse. To create more clarity on this issue and move
toward a policy resolution, future research needs to be enhanced. With that, the
purpose of this paper is to highlight the research to date, stimulate dialogue between
academics and practitioners, and elicit more involvement of practitioners to enhance
the quality of future research on audit firm rotation.
Notes
1. Interestingly, there are dissenting views even among the members of the PCAOB on
the merits of mandatory rotation (Wyatt, 2011), further illustrating the unsettled nature of
the issue.
2. This would be consistent with the approach that state governments within the USA have
taken with applying SOX-type provisions to nonprofits.
3. See Table I for a description of the various definitions of audit quality as operationalized in
audit firm tenure studies.
Audit firm
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4. See Table II for a description of the various definitions of investor perception of audit quality
as operationalized in audit firm tenure studies.
5. The Korean Financial Supervisory Commission, equivalent to the SEC in the USA, defines
a problematic firm as one with high agency problems (e.g. insufficient separation of
ownership and management), financial problems (e.g. excessive reliance on debt and
industry restructuring), questionable auditor changes, and/or GAAP violations in annual
reports.
6. Ruiz-Barbadillo et al. (2009) find that mandatory audit firm rotation has no impact on audit
quality in their study of Spanish firms.
7. Carey and Simnett (2006) find no evidence of an association of long audit tenure with

abnormal accruals.
8. Francis (2011) presents a framework of the audit process that provides a better
understanding of the multiple drivers of audit quality.
9. Current behavioral research on the issue is scant, with Dopuch et al. (2001) being one notable
exception.
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Further reading
Blouin, J., Grien, B. and Roundtree, B. (2007), “An analysis of forced auditor change: the case of
former Arthur Andersen clients”, The Accounting Review, Vol. 82 No. 3, pp. 621-650.
Audit firm
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Cahan, S. and Zhang, W. (2006), “After Enron: auditor conservatism and ex-Andersen clients”,
The Accounting Review, Vol. 81 No. 1, pp. 49-82.
Krishnan, J., Raghunandan, K. and Yang, J. (2007), “Were former Andersen clients treated more

leniently than other clients? Evidence from going-concern modified opinions”, Accounting
Horizons, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 423-435.
Nagy, A. (2005), “Mandatory audit firm turnover, financial reporting quality, and client
bargaining power: the case of Arthur Andersen”, Accounting Horizons, Vol. 19, pp. 51-68.
Corresponding author
David S. Jenkins can be contacted at:
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