Effects of accounting information, ownership structure on the choice of audit company: Non-finance company in Vietnam

Abstract

The research focuses on the influence of accounting information and ownership structure on the choice of an audit firm for enterprises. The authors collected data from 301 companies listed on HOSE and HNX for 5 years from 2017 to 2021. After using quantitative methods, the research results show that SIZE (the firm size), DEBT (liabilities divided by total assets), ROA (return on assets), EPS (earnings per share), BVPS (book value per share), SUB (enterprise has subsidiaries or not) and OWN (concentrated ownership) are statistically significant to explain the influence on the decision to choose a quality audit firm. The research proposes that audit firms expand their approach to clients, increase service types, provide additional information for foreign investors to access, focus on recruitment and training personnel, internal audits regularly and periodically to ensure the quality of the audit is maintained. Furthermore,the study also proposes to large organizations, members of enterprises and individual investors how to use audit information to improve the reliability of financial statements. In addition, planners need to strengthen quality control, develop strict policies, and add standards to promote the development of the audit industry. However, the study still has limitations such as not expanding to unlisted enterprises, not studying financial enterprises and the model only explains 40% of the selection of quality audit firms. Therefore, future studies can expand the database and add observed variables to find out new factors, build a tighter model, and contribute to the development of audit services.