SUMMARY: I use responses from 1,059 chief audit executives (CAEs) of organizations located in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.K./Ireland, and the U.S. to investigate several correlates of co-sourcing and/or outsourcing (hereafter, simply “outsourcing”) of internal audit activities. An important finding of the study is that audit committee involvement is positively and significantly associated with outsourcing of internal audit activities. Interactions of audit committee involvement with organization size and location generally indicate that medium and large international/multinational organizations with audit committee involvement outsource more than medium and large local/national organizations with no audit committee involvement. Analysis of control variables produces significance for an inverse relationship between outsourcing and value-added activities of the internal audit function, and for positive relationships between outsourcing and missing skill set and audit staff vacancies. Other control variables, such as CAE age, college degree (graduate/undergraduate), major (accounting versus others), internal audit certification, and regular meetings with the audit committee do not show significant associations with outsourcing. Also, country of residence (U.S. versus other Anglo-culture countries) is not significant, but for-profit organizations outsource significantly more of their internal audit activities than not-for-profit/governmental organizations. Data Availability: Please contact the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation, which owns the CBOK (2010) database used in this study.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in the degree of usage and

This paper reports on changes in the extent to which decision aids are perceived to be useful for performing detailed financial audit tasks. The decision aids investigated were automation (AU), decision support systems (DSS), and knowledge‐based expert systems (KES). Data were collected from highly experienced mangers and partners from various international accounting firms in 1988 and 1996. The participants were asked to select the decision aid they viewed as applicable for each task in a comprehensive inventory of audit tasks. While the data indicate an increase in the choice of tasks for decision aids use between the two years, the fact remains that a majority of the responses (79% in 1988 and 69% in 1996) indicated human processing (HP) only. We present a list of detailed tasks for which at least 50% of the responses indicated some form of an applicable decision aid in 1996. We also discuss implications for practice and research. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study explores the nature of the information (financial, nonfinancial, and other) that is disseminated by quarterly recommendation reports of sell-side financial analysts. We content-analyzed nearly 7,000 elements contained in 64 analysts' quarterly recommendation reports for companies in four different industries: two intangible-asset-intensive industries and two tangible-asset-intensive industries. The results indicate that analysts' recommendation reports provide a significantly higher proportion of financial information and lower proportion of nonfinancial information for tangible-asset-intensive companies than intangible-asset-intensive companies. We also identify the number of financial and nonfinancial information elements that are traced to SEC filings. We find that a high percentage of this information, especially nonfinancial information, is not provided in these filings. This finding raises significant concerns about the completeness of the current reporting model.

Purpose This study aims to investigate whether eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) disclosure management solution improves public companies’ earnings release efficiency and mitigates earnings management. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts a unique survey data set from the Financial Executives Research Foundation 2013 to identify companies’ XBRL implementation strategies. Earnings release efficiency is measured by earnings announcement time lag. Multiple indicators of both accruals- and real activities-based earnings management are adopted to examine the research hypotheses. Findings The authors find that the disclosure management solution (DMS) XBRL implementation is positively associated with earnings release efficiency for companies with good news. The authors also find that DMS implementation strategy is negatively related to accruals-based earnings management, but positively related to real activities-based earnings management measured by abnormal cash flows. Research limitations/implications The results of this study can inform regulators, investors and corporate management on how XBRL adoption is associated with corporate financial reporting. Originality/value The study contributes to the XBRL literature by providing empirical evidence on how the strategies adopted by companies to implement XBRL may affect the results of XBRL mandatory adoption.