Business Strategy and Audit Efforts - Focusing on Audit Report Lags: An Empirical Study in Korea

This study examines the association between a firm's business strategy and audit report lags. This study employs 5,072 firm-year observations from 2015 to 2019. Our sample comprises all of the firms listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) market and Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (KOSDAQ). We perform OLS regression analysis to test our hypothesis. The OLS regression analysis was conducted through the SAS and STATA programs. We find that business strategy is positively associated with audit report lags. Especially, we find that defender firms are negatively associated with audit report lags. The findings of this study suggest that prospector-like firms would increase their performance uncertainty as well as audit risk. Therefore, prospector-like firms interfere with the efficient audit procedures of auditors. On the other hand, our findings indicate that defender-like firms would decrease their performance uncertainty as well as an audit risk because they focus on simple product lines and cost-efficiency. For this reason, auditors will be able to carry out the audit procedures much more easily. Our results present that a prospector-like business strategy degrades audit effectiveness as it exacerbates a company's financial risk, willingness to accept uncertainty, and the complexity of organizational structure.