Investigation of Relationship between Discretionary Accruals and Auditor Change

Abstract

This paper investigates how potential conflicts and disagreements between managers’ and auditors’ interests about earnings management and use of discretionary accruals cause friction between manager and auditor, and affect the length of tenure and the continuity of auditor’s work. The criterion used to evaluate earnings management is discretionary accruals that were calculated by the modified Kasznik model. The data used in this study are from 72 firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period of 1381-1390, and a logistic regression model is used for data analysis. The results showed that there is not a significant relationship between positive discretionary accruals and auditor change. Also, the results indicated that there is a significant relationship between negative discretionary accruals and auditor change.

Keywords

• discretionary accruals
• auditor tenure
• earnings quality
• earnings management