Accounting Research by W&L’s Colin Reid Accepted for Publication The paper will be published in a journal of the American Accounting Association.

By Taylor Meeker
January 6, 2020

A paper cowritten by Colin Reid, associate professor of accounting, has been accepted for publication by the American Accounting Association (AAA) journal Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory.

“The Effect of Office Changes within Audit Firms on Clients’ Audit Quality and Audit Fees” by Reid, Terry Neal of the University of Tennessee, and Carl Hollingsworth of Clemson University, focuses on the impact of within firm engagement team disruptions on the audit. Within the article, they identify a sample of companies where the audit firm issuing office changed but the audit firm did not. They then investigate the effect of these changes on the audit.

Reid and his colleagues examine office changes in two groups: client driven changes and audit firm driven changes. They find client driven changes are more likely to result in a higher audit fee, while quality is unchanged. Audit firm driven changes do not result in a higher fee but present a decrease in audit quality.

“What made this article really unique was that we interviewed a number of different audit partners at different firms to get a better understanding for how they managed engagement team transition within their firms,” said Reid. “These interviews were critical for setting a framework for our research. We were able to specify our research models based on these discussions. We believe the interaction between partners in practice and our research data gave this paper a unique contribution.”

Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory Information publishes papers reporting results of original research that focuses on improvements in auditing theory or auditing methodology. Publication of this paper is forthcoming.

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