Audit Opinion and Audit Report Lag: The Moderating Role of Sustainability Disclosure

نوع المستند : المقالات الأصلية

المؤلفون

1 قسم المحاسبة، كلية الإدارة والاقتصاد، جامعة أم القرى ، مكة المكرمة، المملكة العربية السعودية

2 قسم المحاسبة، كلية الإدارة والاقتصاد، جامعة أم القرى، مكة المكرمة، المملكة العربية السعودية

10.21608/jcese.2025.376157.1108

المستخلص

One of the most powerful tools by which auditors can certify their position regarding the financial performance and reporting of companies is the auditor opinion. Apart from the most common “unqualified” opinion, auditors issue qualified opinions when they have reservations about certain aspects of the financial statements. This opinion has the potential of delaying the release of the audit report as companies that receive qualified opinion require more in-depth analysis. Thus, an attempt to test this hypothesis for non-financial Saudi companies, together with examining moderating impact of sustainability reporting level on such relationship, is conducted in this study. By applying the notions of the agency, stakeholder, and signaling theories, and developing two regression models to a sample of 654 data points belonging to 140 companies, from 2018 to 2022, it was deduced that companies that receive a “qualified” audit opinion have longer audit report lag (ARL) and that the level of sustainability disclosure moderates such an association between these two variables. These findings can assist emerging market regulators in imposing stricter requirements for sustainability disclosure to help shorten the ARL and improve the investors’ confidence in the capital markets.

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