Essays on auditors' and financial reporting - The impact of non-financial disclosures on stakeholders' perceptions

Abstract

This dissertation deals with the recent regulatory changes in audit reporting and non-financial reporting by management and the supervisory board. The first three papers of the dissertation focus on the implementation of key audit matters (KAMs) in the auditor’s report, while the fourth paper investigates the effects of a separate going concern emphasis of matter paragraph and responsibilities paragraphs in the auditor’s report. The last paper focuses on the communication of the management and the supervisory board with the financial statements’ addressees. Our results reveal that KAMs impact audit committee members’ decision making by strengthening their financial statement accountability. But in case the directors are stock-compensated, KAMs can serve as disclaimer and legitimize a more self-serving decision. However, though KAMs impact the decision making, they are only rarely mentioned in the report of the supervisory board. Therefore, the disclosure of KAMs does not increase the reporting quality of this report. There exists also room for improvement of the KAM-reporting itself in order to enhance the communicative value of the auditor’s report. Furthermore, we experimentally investigated whether a going concern emphasis of matter paragraph (GC-EOM) or a responsibilities paragraph in the auditor’s report and the strength of the audit committee influence bank directors’ decision making. Our findings show that a GC-EOM impacts bank directors’ decision making due to a source credibility effect, while we do not find significant effects of a responsibilities paragraph or the strength of the audit committee. The results of the last study reveal extensive room of improvement concerning the language of the reporting tools of management and the supervisory board.