Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of self-efficacy, goal orientation and task complexity on audit judgement performance in correctly linking audit procedures to audit objectives and types of misstatements. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an experiment audit with 154 auditors from small and medium audit firms in Malaysia as participants. The experimental task required them to link audit procedures to audit objectives and types of misstatements. Findings For sample of auditors from small and medium audit firms in Malaysia, the authors found that learning goal orientation has a stronger effect on audit judgement performance than performance-approach and performance-avoidance goal orientations. Self-efficacy mediates the effect of goal orientation when an audit task is less complex compared to when the task is more complex. Research limitations/implications These results highlight the importance of social cognitive factors in explaining variations in audit judgement performance for audit judgement tasks with different levels of complexity. Originality/value The incorporation of individual psychological differences as explanatory variables in audit judgement studies may lead to a better understanding of auditors’ judgement and decision-making processes in small and medium audit firms located in developing economies.

Purpose -Conflicts between managers and outside auditors may exist in choosing alternative accounting procedures. Since auditors are appointed by the firm, they are subject to dismissal if divergent opinions cannot be resolved. To a lesser extent, financial reports are often negotiated. In order to produce unbiased financial reports, audit committee members are appointed to act independently in order to resolve conflicts between the managers and outside auditors. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of some audit committee characteristics, i.e. the independence of members, size, frequency of meeting and knowledge of the members, to monitor management behavior with respect to their incentives to manage earnings. Design/methodology/approach -This paper uses discretionary accruals obtained from the established model as a signal of the presence of earnings management. Findings -The evidence shows that the presence of a fully independent audit committee reduces earnings management practices. It was also found that firms which had more knowledgeable audit committee members and held more audit committee meetings recorded fewer earnings management practices compared with other firms. Originality/value -This paper is different from prior studies, in that it makes a significant contribution towards enhancing one's knowledge in the interacting role of audit committee characteristics.

This paper presents a review of the research literature on materiality. Previous research in materiality shows inconsistencies in judgments among auditors and other groups. Research findings suggest that variations in materiality judgments may be due to a number of factors including personality, contextual differences, and audit structure, or due to the absence of a clear materiality guideline. The objectives of this paper are to evaluate the development of research on materiality, identify variables that may have potential effects on materiality judgments, and establish the future direction of research in this area.

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This study examines the association between foreign shareholdings and several characteristics of board of directors in the context of a developing capital market. Using data of 777 listed firms on Bursa Malaysia for the financial year 2008, the study predicts that foreign shareholdings are positively related to board independence, multiple directorships, and financial literacy of the board of directors. The study finds a strong positive relationship between multiple directorships and foreign shareholdings. Contrary to our expectation, the association between board financial literacy and foreign shareholdings is negative and significant. With regard to the link between board independence and foreign shareholdings, we find weak evidence to support our prediction that there is positive relationship between board independence and foreign shareholdings. The multivariate results also show strong positive relationships between foreign shareholdings and number of foreign directors on boards, and between foreign shareholdings and audit quality. The study also documents a significant negative association between foreign shareholdings and firm size, and between foreign shareholdings and book-to-market ratio. The findings of the study supports the view that multiple directorships is an important asset to firms in emerging markets partly due to limited pool of potential talents and experts