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Audit Delay and Audit Quality: The Nigerian experience

Augustine O. Enofe
Osarumwense O. Ediae
Ejiemen C. Okunega
University of Benin, Nigeria
INTRODUCTION
Accounting is an important profession in our society. Harvey (2009, as cited in Adeyemi &
Fagbemi, 2011) described the profession as a group of people in a learned occupation, the members of
which agree to abide by specified rules of conduct when practicing the profession. Such codes require
behaviour and practice beyond the personal moral obligations of an individual. This suggests that
accounting influences the society and accounting is influenced by the society. The public expects
accounting professionals to be practical, intellectual and to have regard for the public. It becomes vital
that accounting practitioners demonstrate the attributes of objectivity and integrity and keep abreast of
developments that have impact on the profession. Fagbemi, Uadiale and Noah (2010), opined that
good accounting information is usually characterized by factors such as relevance, adequacy,
comparability and reliability in order for the information provided to be useful for decision making by
the various stakeholders which include investors and government agencies. Investors need timely
information for reducing the asymmetric dissemination of financial information (Jaggi and Tsui, 1999)
and for the growth of investing community as a whole. According to Fairchild (2008), audit quality is a
basic ingredient in enhancing the credibility of financial statements to users of accounting information.
Undue delay in releasing financial statements results in greater market inefficiency (Ismail and
Chandler, 2003) and it reduces the relevance of the documents and its information content (Ahmad &
Kamarudin, 2001).According to the American Accounting Association (1954), one of the essential
elements of adequate disclosures was timeliness of reporting. Audit report lag, and the associated
financial reporting lag, has recently been an issue of significant concern to regulators and the auditing
profession (SEC 2002b, 2002c).
Statement of Problem
Prior studies have used a variety of measures as proxies for audit quality, for example,
restatement as a measure of audit quality (Srinivasan 2005; Dao, Raghunandan, & Rama, 2012).
Comparing audit outcomes between classes of auditors is also to proxy for audit quality. On average,
Big-N audits are of better quality (Weber & Willenborg 2003). An industry specialist, in addition to a
brand name, is known to offer a higher level of assurance than does a non-specialist (Beasley &
Petroni, 2001; Owhoso, Messier & Lynch, 2002).A number of studies (Healy and Kim, 2003; AICPA,
1992) consider rotation of audit firms as a way of improving audit quality. This study uses auditors
reputation as a proxy for audit quality. Owusu-Ansah and Leventis (2006) opined that timeliness of
accounting information have become an important issue now than ever before as a result of
phenomenal changes in both modern technology and business practices worldwide. Timely reporting
will enhance decision-making and reduce information asymmetry. McGee (2006, 2007a) asserts that
companies in transition economies issue their financial statement later than companies in the more
developed market economies. Hence, such delay may affect the level of confidence on the financial
statements.
Evidence on the studies into the timeliness of accounting information exists across developed
economies of the world. Studies of Bamber, Bamber and Schoderbek, (1993) in North America and
Soltani (2002) in Europe as well as that of Ashton, Paul and James (1989) and have made significant
contributions on the importance of timeliness of accounting information. However, the main focus of

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these prior studies has been on the developed economies. Although literature suggests that some
emerging markets have, however, been studied, there is paucity of literature in Nigeria.
Owusu-Ansah (2000) in Zimbabwe and Iman, Ahmed and Khan (2001) in Bangladesh are examples of
studies in an emerging market. Therefore, this study attempts to provide evidence on the impact of
audit delay, total delay and board size on audit quality in Nigeria.
In light of the above, the research questions are:
1. What is the relationship between audit delay and audit quality?
2
What is the effect of total delay on audit quality?
3
What is the relationship between board size and audit quality?
Research Objectives
The research objectives are to:
1. ascertain the relationship between audit delay and audit quality;
2. find out the effect of total delay on audit quality;
and
3. examine the relationship between board size and audit quality.
Hypotheses of the study
The hypotheses of this study are stated in their alternate forms:
HA: Audit delay is positively related to audit quality.
HA: Total delay significantly affects audit quality.
HA: Board size is positively related to audit quality.
Significance of the Study
This study contributes to the literature on audit delay and audit quality. It also provides additional
proof on the effect of total delay and board size on audit quality. This study will be useful to
shareholders as it provides evidence on the relationship between audit delay and audit quality.
Scope of the Study
This study attempts an analysis of audit delay and audit quality. Therefore, data on companies in
Nigeria were sought in providing answers to the research questions. The study focuses on companies
quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Audit Quality
According to Dye (1993) an audit consists of both informational and liability components and
demonstrates conditions under which the auditors wealth serves as a bond to ensure a high-quality
audit. He provides an equilibrium audit pricing equation that combines the market for auditors with the
market for the companies that hire them. In addition to showing that audit quality is a function of the
auditors at-risk wealth, Dye (1993) provides the conditions under statement users have on this wealth.
Lennox (1999a) opined that the two most common motivations used to explain why auditors
qualify their opinions and, thus, provide audit quality in the context of audit reporting are the
reputation hypothesis and the deep pockets hypothesis. The reputation hypothesis states that an audit
firm signals quality to financial statement users by investing in brand name capital. An established
brand name that signals a reputation for quality audits acts as a bond that guarantees the auditors
performance (DeAngelo, 1981b).
As a result, the audit firm can earn quasi-rents on its reputation (Craswell, Francis & Taylor,
1995). However, should an audit quality error occur and be discovered, the value of an audit firms
reputation diminishes, as well as its ability to earn quasi-rents on that reputation. This provides a
motivation for the auditor to maintain reputation through the provision of high quality audits (Franz,
Crawford & Johnson, 1997).
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Menon and Williams, (1994) assert that an alternative motivation for providing audit quality is
the deep-pockets hypothesis. Here, the auditor acts as a partial guarantor of the value of investments
Investors regard the audit firm as a major source of financial recovery for subsequent investment losses
that result from an error or materially misstated financial statements. According to this view, auditors
with have more incentive to issue accurate audit reports and maintain audit quality (Dye, 1993).
Audit Delay
Timeliness is an important qualitative attribute of financial statement, which requires the
information to be made available to information users as rapidly as possible (Zhang, 2012). The
recognition that the length of audit may be the single most important determinant affecting the timing
of financial reports (Givoly & Palmon 1982). The shorter the time between the end of the accounting
year and the publication date, the greater the benefits that can be derived from the financial statements.
The delay in releasing financial reports is most likely to increase uncertainty associated with the
decisions made based on information contained in the financial statements. Both the empirical and
analytical evidences reveal that the timeliness of financial statements has some repercussions on firm
valuation (Givoly & Palmon 1982; Kross and Schroeder 1984).
Delayed disclosure of an auditor's opinion on the true and fair view of financial information
prepared by management exacerbates the information asymmetry and increases the uncertainty in
investment decisions.(Mohamad-Nor, Shafie & Wan-Hussin, 2010).
Givoly and Palmon (1982) opined that audit lag is the single most important determinant of
timeliness in earnings announcement, which in turn, determines the market reaction to earnings
announcement. Knechel and Payne (2001) suggest that an unexpected reporting lag may be associated
with lower quality information.According to Courtis (1976) and Carslaw and Kaplan (1991),
companies which experienced losses have a longer lag. Bamber, Bamber and Schoderbek (1993) assert
that audit lag is influenced by an auditor's business risk associated with the client and audit specific
events that are expected to require additional audit work such as extraordinary items, net losses and
qualified audit opinions. They also find that large clients have a shorter audit lag. Schwartz and Soo
(1996) opined that audit lag increased for companies that switched their auditor late in the fiscal year.
This result is consistent with their expectation that companies change their auditor early in their fiscal
year for positive reasons, whereas late auditor switching is driven by extended auditor-client
negotiations or opinion shopping, which leads to longer audit lag.
Whittred and Zimmer (1984) examined the predictive ability of financial reporting delays in
predicting financial distress. Contrasting lags of failed and non-failed firms for each of the five years
prior to failure using 37 matched pairs of firms, they find that companies entering financial distress
experience longer auditors' signature lags at least three years prior to failure.
Courtis (1976) finds no significant association between reporting delay and corporate size, age,
number of shareholders, and length of annual report in New Zealand. However, he finds an inverse
relationship between absolute profit and reporting delay. He also observes that fuel and energy and
finance companies were faster reporters than companies in service industries and in mining and
exploration.
Total Delay
According to Afolabi (2007), there are three major criteria used in evaluating the quality of
financial reports- timeliness, reliability and comparability. Abiola and Ojo (2012) opined that the
enhancement of information disclosed in financial statements to meet the needs of different
stakeholders and the increased legal importance of financial accounting statements led to the present
day Financial Reporting.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 which was a by-product of the corporate governance challenges
in America provided that management had the responsibility to establish and maintain adequate
internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting. Abdulla (1996) argues that the shorter
the time between the end of the awaiting year and the publication date, the greater the benefits that can
be derived from the financial statements.
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Lev and Zarowin (1999) suggested that information disclosed in financial reports are
deteriorating in usefulness due to increasing demand by investors for relevant information and
persistent regulatory efforts to improve on the quality and timeliness of reported information.
Abraham, Deo and Ivine (2008) supported this view by highlighting subjectivity of financial reports
and their failure to present accurate portrayal of the underlying realities.
Financial Reports should provide detailed relevant information on a timely and consistent basis
to ensure their usefulness. Such information should cover financial data and non financial details such
as corporate governance and risk management practices that give further insight into the capabilities of
the entity. In fact, the origin of corporate governance has been linked to the desire to improve
transparency in financial reporting. (Abiola & Ojo, 2012).
Board Size
Previous studies focused on the influence of board size on its ability to control managers
discretionary sphere in favour of the firm and its shareholders (Patton and Baker, 1987; Jensen, 1993).
The results are mixed. For Jensen (1993), adding an extra administrator has opposite effects. It tends to
increase the boards control capacity, though this role is counterbalanced by the marginal cost of an
extra administrator in terms of communication and decision-making (Mezghani & Ellouze, 2007).
Indeed, a large-sized board may produce a limited efficiency because of communication and
coordination difficulties between members and offer thus a margin of freedom to managers. Lipton and
Lorsh (1992) believe that large-sized boards make communication and decision-making processes
heavier and more difficult.
According to Jensen (1993), for a board to be efficient, it should have a relatively modest size
(7 to 8 members) in order not to be controlled by the manager. Likewise, the manager should be the
only internal member within the board as presence of other internal members may favour the
managers influence over them. The author proves that boards with a large number of administrators
favour managers domination which could lead to group conflicts. Consequently, he adds that boards
will be fragmented and will face difficulties in finding a consensus on important decisions which
would diminish protection of shareholders interests (Godard & Schatt, 2004). In this line of thinking,
other authors, relying on groups cohesion principles, defended the assumption that small-sized boards
may be more performing than large-sized boards (Brown & Mahoney, 1992).
METHODOLOGY
The quality of any research work is very much influenced by the techniques used. This is so
because the techniques have an impact reliability of the conclusion.
The Cross sectional survey design was adopted for this study. Data gathered from annual
reports of selected companies quoted on the Nigeria Stock Exchange was used for this study. A sample
of fifty (50) audited financial reports of these companies for the period ending 2011 was selected using
the simple random sampling technique. Emory & Cooper (2003), Krejcie & Morgan (1970) population
proportion of 0.05 as adequate to provide the maximum sample size required for generalization.
Mgbame, Erhagbe and Osazuwa (2012) opined that the choice of Maximum Likelihood (ML) binary
logit is based on the inability of the ordinary least square regression model, OLS multiple regression
model to yield reliable coefficients and inference statistics in situation where the dependent variable is
binary (0 and 1). Thus the binary logit regression model unlike others is based on the use of
dichotonomous dependent variable. The model developed basically relates audit delay with audit
quality measured by the likelihood that a sampled company employs the services of the big audit firms
in Nigeria. Namely; Ernst & Young, Price Water House Coopers, Akintola Williams Delliote and
KPMG. Several Studies (Skinner and Srinivasan, 2010; Krishnamurthy, Zhon and Zhon 2002) have
provided both theoretical and empirical evidence for use of big audit firms as a proxy for audit quality.
A dummy value of 1 is used if a firm uses any of the big 4 auditors (Ernst & Young, Price Water
House Coopers, Akintola Williams Delliote and KPMG) and 0 if otherwise. The study employed two
control variables; they include total delay and board size.
The regression model for this study takes the form:
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AUDITQUAL = 0 + 1 ADLAY + 2 TDLAY + 3 BSZE + .................................... (1)


Where:
AUDITQUAL= Audit Quality
ADLAY= Audit Delay
TDLAY= Total Delay
BSZE= Board Size
The dependent variable for this study is audit quality. We used auditors reputation as a proxy for audit
quality. The independent variable is audit delay. Audit delay was measured as the length of time from
a company's fiscal year-end to the date the auditor's report was issued. Total delay was measured as the
length of time from a companys fiscal year-end to the date of the annual general meeting. Board size
was measured as the number of directors on the board.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
AUDQ
Mean
Median
Std. Dev.
Jarque-Bera
Probability
Observations
Source: E views 7 Output

ADEL

TDEL

BDSIZ

0.7
1
0.46291

94.98
88
32.08693

178.14
171
46.9146

9.62
9
2.849203

9.542706
0.008469
50

72.75553
0
50

18.64813
0.000089
50

12.82205
0.001643
50

Based on the above table, the mean for audit quality (AUDQ) is 0.7, for audit delay (ADEL) is
95 days, for total delay (TDEL) is 179 days, and for board size (BDSIZ) is 10. The implication of this
is that the quality of audit of most companies examined is moderate as the average is above 50%. Also,
it is observed that the auditors employed take about three (3) months to present their report to
management while management take another three (3) month before presenting to the stakeholders. In
summary, it takes an average of six (6) months before the reports are presented to stakeholders. This
suggests that information as presented is not timely. Based on the Jarque Bera statistics, it is observed
that the variables examined are normally distributed as they all have a probability value lower than
0.05. Hence, the rule of thumb assumption for normality is satisfied.
Correlation Matrix
AUDQ

ADEL

TDEL

BDSIZ

AUDQ

0.077904

-0.299677

0.004642

ADEL

0.077904441

0.6772076

-0.1112533

TDEL

-0.29967725

0.677208

-0.1475375

BDSIZ
0.004642
-0.11125
-0.147537
1
Source: E views 7 Output
The table above shows the relationship amongst the variables. It is observed that all the
independent variables have a positive relationship with audit quality except for total delay, which has a
weak negative relationship. This implies that the longer it takes for reports to get to the public, the
lower the perceived quality. Also, the table shows that audit delay is strongly associated with total
delay. This is rational as the audit delay is a subset of total delay because the longer the audit delays,
the longer the total delay will be ceteris paribus.

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Variable
C
ADEL
TDEL
BDSIZ

Binary Logit Regression Result


Coefficient
Std. Error
z-Statistic
Prob.
3.818542
2.192504
1.741635
0.0816
0.041235
0.017232
2.392957
0.0167
-0.035691
0.012641
-2.823496
0.0048
-0.039779
0.121541
-0.327291
0.7434

McFadden R-squared
LR statistic
Prob(LR statistic)
Obs with Dep=0
Obs with Dep=1
Source: Eviews 7 Output

0.198475
12.12411
0.00697
15
35

Mean dependent var


Avg. log likelihood

Total obs

0.7
-0.48962

50

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
The regression result above shows that all the independent variables jointly explain about 20%
of the systematic variation in the dependent variable (AUDQ) leaving about 80% unexplained by
factors not captured in the model.
On account of the overall significance of the model, the LR-statistics (probability) of 12.124
(0.00697) indicates that all the independent variables taken holistically significantly explain the
dependent variable. Hence, the explanatory power of the model is sound.
Based on the individual relationship of the independent variables, the signs of the Z-statistics
show that only ADEL has a positive relationship with AUDQ while TDEL and BDSIZ have a negative
relationship with AUDQ.
With respect to the individual significance of the independent variables, the probability values
of the Z-statistics reveal that both ADEL and TDEL significantly affect AUDQ at the 0.05 significance
level, as their probability values are less than 0.05. Furthermore, BDSIZ has an insignificant negative
effect on AUDQ.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
This paper was set out to determine the relationship between audit delay and audit quality. We
used auditors reputation as a proxy for audit quality. The independent variable is audit delay. Audit
delay was measured as the length of time from a company's fiscal year-end to the date the auditor's
report was issued. Total delay was measured as the length of time from a companys fiscal year-end to
the date of the annual general meeting. Board size was measured as the number of directors on the
board. Audit delay was positively related to audit quality; therefore we accept the alternative
hypothesis. Total delay had a significant effect on audit quality; we therefore accept the alternative
hypothesis. However, board size was negatively related to audit quality, we therefore accept the null
hypothesis and reject the alternative. It was found that audit delay is related to audit quality, this study
therefore recommend that future research should extend these tests to other settings and periods in
order to determine if this effect is particular industry or firms, or to the period examined, and whether
there is a significant effect over longer periods than one year.
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