The characteristics of the audit committee affecting timeliness of the audit report in Indonesia

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the positive relationship between the audit committee (AC) and the reporting quality proxied by the reporting timeliness in the Indonesian context. The AC effectiveness is measured by the committee size, number of its expertise or competence, and its meeting frequency. This study employs 240 observations from 48 manufacturing companies from 2014 to 2019 in the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) as samples. A logit regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses in this study. The findings reveal that the AC size and financial expertise are not significantly associated with the audit report timeliness, whereas the meeting frequency has a significant effect on it. The results indicate that the AC effectiveness depends on the occurrence of communication between members. The more frequent the AC meets, the more effective their communication will be. This study findings also suggest that the number of the AC meetings is crucial in ensuring its oversight roles in companies, leading to timely submission of audited financial statements. The findings provide significant contributions to the existing literature on corporate governance (CG), especially the AC effectiveness in emerging economies. This study fills research gaps on the AC effectiveness and provides practical implications concerning the AC oversight of financial reporting. Despite results made by studies on the AC in developed economies such as the US and UK, conditions and factors affecting the AC effectiveness in developing countries such as Indonesia may differ. Hence, the findings of these studies may not apply to other contextual environments.

Keywords

• audit committee effectiveness
• size
• expertise
• meeting frequency
• report quality
• corporate governance