2.2 Audit Tenure
Audit tenure refers to audit period in which external auditor have spent to provide
audit service to a client. A number of academics and practitioners argue that the longer the
external auditor provides audit service to a client, the greater the independence threats (for
instance Geiger and Raghunandan, 2002). In contrast, opponents argue that shorter audit
tenure requires greater costs to apply complex audit procedures in a very limited time
therefore audit fee would be higher (Palmrose, 1986).
Chen et al. (2008) reveals that regulators (the government and standard setting body)
are very concerned about long-term audit tenure because external auditor tends to
compromise with accounting policy in longer tenure. Long-term audit tenure may result in
close relationship between auditor and management (so called familiarity threat). Therefore,
long-term audit tenure potentially reduces auditor independence leading to a decline in
quality of audit and client’s value. In contrast, Johnson, Khurana, and Reynolds (2002) find
that shorter audit tenure tends to result in worse financial report quality than longer audit
tenure.