Section 301 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) requires public companies to establish
independent audit committees to help to deter management fraud and enhance
No fraud
occurrence
503
the independence and integrity of financial reporting. Prior research has indicated that
the effectiveness of these audit committees has an important effect on the corporate
governance process within an organization. In a Canadian study, Goh (2009) found
the effectiveness of a firm’s independent audit committee to be associated with that
firm’s timeliness in remediating material weaknesses in internal control, thereby
helping to improve financial reporting quality and, ultimately, enhancing corporate
governance. In a 2004 KPMG Audit Committee Institute survey of about 500 audit
committee members fromvarious industries (Harrast and Olsen, 2007), 71 percent of the
respondents expressed the belief that the losses incurred in some of the high-profile
financial reporting scandals that had occurred in the past could have been avoided if the
financial reporting and audit processes of the companies concerned had been overseen
by effective audit committees. This survey also suggested that most audit committees’
members would concur with the ideas expressed by the US Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) concerning the importance of an effective audit committee in helping
to detect and prevent fraud. A US study (Kaplan et al., 2009) found that the audit
committees of public companies with effective operating procedures help to minimize
the likelihood of fraud to a certain extent. In addition, Persons (2009) reported that large
and independent audit committees help to prevent fraudulent financial reporting
incidents in organizations. In view of the demonstrated significance of the audit
committee effectiveness variable, the following hypothesis is proposed: