تخصص صنعتی شریک حسابرس و کیفیت حسابرسی: شواهدی از اسپانیا Audit partner industry specialization and audit quality: Evidence from Spain

1 | INTRODUCTION DeAngelo (1981) defined audit quality as the joint probability that an auditor will both detect and report a material misstatement. Accordingly, the provision of high‐quality audit services requires the auditor to be competent (to be able to identify accounting misstatements) and independent (to report the detected misstatements). Lead audit partners, as the ultimate responsible for the audit report, are expected to play a fundamental role in determining the quality of audit services. Since individual auditors differ in terms of their incentives and attributes such as risk preference, expertise, ability, or cognitive style (Gul, Wu, & Yang, 2013), they should also differ with respect to the competence and independence dimensions of audit quality. It is precisely because of the importance of individual auditors’ idiosyncrasies that audit firms try to maintain consistency in the quality of audit services through control mechanisms (Gul et al., 2013; Jeppesen, 2007). A quickly growing number of empirical studies have addressed the role of individual auditors as determinants of audit quality (e.g., Aobdia, Lin, & Petacchi, 2015; Carey & Simnett, 2006; Garcia‐Blandon & Argiles, 2017; Gul et al., 2013; Knechel, Vanstraelen, & Zerni, 2015). While the industry specialization of audit firms has attracted a lot of attention (e.g., Balsam, Krishnan, & Yang, 2003; Carson, 2009; Casterella, Francis, Lewis, & Walker, 2004; Craswell, Francis, & Taylor, 1995; DeFond, Francis, & Wong, 2000; Dunn & Mayhew, 2004), few papers have investigated how the industry specialization of individual auditors impacts audit quality (Chi & Chin, 2011; Chin & Chi, 2009; Chin, Yao, & Liu, 2014; Goodwin & Wu, 2014; Zerni, 2012). These studies generally agree that industry specialization of both the audit firm and audit partners enhances audit quality. Owing to the data availability, evidence at the individual auditor level is limited to just four countries: Taiwan (Chi & Chin, 2011; Chi, Myers, Omer, & Xie, 2017; Chin et al., 2014; Chin & Chi, 2009), Sweden (Zerni, 2012), Australia (Goodwin & Wu, 2014) and China (Chen, Sun, & Wu, 2010). DeFond and Francis (2005) encouraged to further investigate audit quality at the partner level in those markets with available data. Chen et al.’s (2010) findings on the importance of legal and regulatory changes to better understand the relationship between auditors and clients stress the need to conduct empirical studies across different institutional settings. This view is even more explicit in Bedard (2012), who advocated for replication studies in any jurisdiction currently requiring engagement partner signature. The author argued that because of the importance of the institutional context (i.e., quality control policies of audit firms, regulatory inspections and interaction with client personnel in charge of governance) on the level of accountability for lead engagement partners and, given that this institutional context is largely country specific, replication studies conducted in previously uninvestigated audit markets should be welcomed.