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Abstract
Audit firms can shape and foster the desired behavior of their partners in accordance with the firm’s strategy and objectives through compensation schemes. Understanding financial incentives is therefore of great importance, especially to ensure that auditors actually deliver high quality work. This study analyzes the elements associated with the compensation of audit partners in Belgium, and specifically contributes to the literature by investigating how compensation schemes vary across firms of different sizes (Big 4, second-tier, and small audit firms). Our results indicate that the mixture of equal sharing and performance based compensation elements varies across firms of different sizes. Partner compensation in larger (Big 4 and second-tier) firms is more heavily based on performance based elements than in smaller audit firms. Furthermore, in firms of all sizes compensation appears to be strongly associated with commercially oriented elements while professionally oriented elements only play a minor role. Professionally oriented elements are, however, slightly more important in larger (Big 4 and second-tier) firms than in smaller firms.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 521-554 |
Number of pages | 34 |
Journal | European Accounting Review |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2020 |
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38th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association (EAA)
Marie-Laure Vandenhaute (Speaker)
28 Apr 2015 → 30 Apr 2015Activity: Talk or presentation › Talk or presentation at a conference
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PhD Workshop related to the 8th European Auditing Research Network Symposium
Marie-Laure Vandenhaute (Speaker)
10 Sept 2015 → 12 Sept 2015Activity: Talk or presentation › Talk or presentation at a workshop/seminar