Lobbying on audit regulation at IAASB

ABSTRACT The main goal of the paper is to analyze whether the positions of auditors and regulators, and their respective coalitions, regarding the proposals of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) in the last phase of the public consultation “Improving the Auditor’s Report” are significantly different, as well as the effectiveness of a lobbying strategy using comment letters. The relevance of this research lies in providing evidence on whether or not the IAASB is influenced by the lobbying strategies of different interest groups carried out via comment letters, especially auditors and regulators (both individually and in coalitions). The results show that both auditors and regulators attempeted to influence the IAASB’s decision-making process, with their coalitions taking a different position on some questions. However, none of these interest groups predominated in terms of the effectiveness of the lobbying carried out, hence the results are consistent with institutional theory, in that the IAASB seeks legitimacy in its actions and tries to accommodate several different interests, but does not let itself be captured by any specific group. We analyzed and classified the comments (from a total of 86 letters) to nine questions proposed by the IAASB into a five-point Likert scale. This classification was independently cross-validated by a second researcher. We applied ANOVA tests to analyze the position of the interest groups, and chi- squared tests for the position of their coalitions. This paper addresses lobbying within the process of auditing standards settings, thus expanding the current literature on lobbying in accounting, which is mainly restricted to accounting regulations. It also contributes methodologically by using a new five-point scale for the dependent variable instead of the usual binary approach.

摘要 本研究的核心目标为分析审计师与监管机构及其各自联盟，针对国际审计与鉴证准则理事会（International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board，IAASB）在‘优化审计师报告’公共咨询最后阶段的提案所持立场是否存在显著差异，同时评估通过意见函开展的游说策略的实际效果。本研究的学术价值在于，为国际审计与鉴证准则理事会（IAASB）是否会受到不同利益集团通过意见函实施的游说策略影响提供实证证据，尤其是审计师与监管机构两类群体（包括其单独行动与联盟形式）。研究结果显示，审计师与监管机构均试图影响IAASB的决策流程，其联盟在部分议题上立场存在分歧。但未有任何一类利益集团在游说效果上占据主导地位，该结果与制度理论的论断相符：IAASB旨在为自身行为寻求合法性，并尝试兼顾多方不同利益，但不会被任何特定集团所俘获。我们针对IAASB提出的9项议题，对总计86封意见函中的评论内容进行了分析与编码，并采用五点李克特量表（Likert scale）进行量化分类。该分类结果已由第二名研究人员独立进行交叉效度检验。我们运用方差分析（ANOVA）检验不同利益集团的立场差异，并采用卡方检验（chi-squared tests）分析其联盟的立场分布。本研究聚焦审计准则制定流程中的游说行为，拓展了当前主要局限于会计法规领域的会计游说相关文献。同时在方法论层面，本研究采用新型五点量表作为因变量，替代了以往常用的二元分类方法。