Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Audit committee role: formal rituals or effective oversight process?

Audit committee role: formal rituals or effective oversight process? The purpose of this paper is to analyze the perception held by attendees about the role and the effectiveness of their audit committees.Design/methodology/approachThe investigation was conducted via a qualitative methodology through the content analysis of interviews conducted with 33 attendees of audit committee meetings of Tunisian listed companies.FindingsThe findings reveal that audit committees do not have the means to achieve the objectives that they have been given by the legal texts, which are likely to characterize their work as “ceremonial” or “symbolic.” This paper also found that the most significant effects of the audit committee chair’s role come through informal meetings and conversations.Practical implicationsThe paper’s findings have policy implications for regulators. Findings from this research may allow regulators to assess whether the audit committee activities in Tunisian companies meet their expectations.Originality/valueThis paper tries to fill a gap in the extant literature and provides meaningful information on activities performed by audit committees and the extent to which they are perceived effective in the eyes of attendees of audit-committee meetings. This study is one of the few field investigations that have analyzed audit committees’ effectiveness in emerging markets through interviews with attendees involved in audit-committee processes. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Managerial Auditing Journal Emerald Publishing

Audit committee role: formal rituals or effective oversight process?

Download PDF
23 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/audit-committee-role-formal-rituals-or-effective-oversight-process-f9x01bbNgk

References (79)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
© Emerald Publishing Limited
ISSN
0268-6902
DOI
10.1108/maj-11-2017-1708
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the perception held by attendees about the role and the effectiveness of their audit committees.Design/methodology/approachThe investigation was conducted via a qualitative methodology through the content analysis of interviews conducted with 33 attendees of audit committee meetings of Tunisian listed companies.FindingsThe findings reveal that audit committees do not have the means to achieve the objectives that they have been given by the legal texts, which are likely to characterize their work as “ceremonial” or “symbolic.” This paper also found that the most significant effects of the audit committee chair’s role come through informal meetings and conversations.Practical implicationsThe paper’s findings have policy implications for regulators. Findings from this research may allow regulators to assess whether the audit committee activities in Tunisian companies meet their expectations.Originality/valueThis paper tries to fill a gap in the extant literature and provides meaningful information on activities performed by audit committees and the extent to which they are perceived effective in the eyes of attendees of audit-committee meetings. This study is one of the few field investigations that have analyzed audit committees’ effectiveness in emerging markets through interviews with attendees involved in audit-committee processes.

Journal

Managerial Auditing Journal – Emerald Publishing

Published: Jun 12, 2019

Keywords: Qualitative approach; Emerging economies; Audit committee effectiveness

There are no references for this article.