The role of integration between sustainability governance standards and the characteristics of the head of the oversight committee in audit quality
Master thesis submitted to
Board of the College of Administration and Economics, University of Karbala, which is part of the requirements for obtaining a master’s degree in accounting sciences
for the student
Sabreen Karim Abboud
Supervised by
Assistant Professor Hussen Amran Naji Al-Refiay
Abstract :
The research aims to clarify the concept of sustainability governance standards and the audit committee, the considerations and characteristics on which they are based, their types, their relationship to the evaluation process and performance improvement, and the impact of integration between sustainability governance standards and the characteristics of the audit committee chairman on the quality of reports issued by the audit committee, by measuring the impact of the independence of the audit committee chairman and the extent of commitment to the standards for determining the responsibilities and powers of the company’s administrative levels on the quality of the audit, measuring the impact of the practical efficiency of the audit committee chairman and the company’s strategic visions on the quality of the audit, measuring the impact of the efficiency and scientific experience of the audit committee chairman and the company’s commitment to setting limits on the work of the audit committee on the quality of the audit, measuring the impact of the age of the audit committee chairman and the trend of determining ages to occupy positions in the company on the quality of the audit, and measuring the impact of the commitment to professional ethics of the audit committee chairman and the commitment of the board of directors to the code of ethics on the quality of the audit. The researcher relied on the inductive approach in addressing the research problems and proving its hypotheses in the theoretical aspect to achieve the research objectives after reviewing the literature, laws, local audit guides, international standards and directives issued by relevant Arab and international organizations. As for the applied aspect, it relied on the (descriptive analytical) approach by studying and analyzing the annual reports and financial statements issued by the research sample, in addition to using the deductive approach by using the questionnaire tool in studying and evaluating the results.
The research reached a set of conclusions, the most important of which were the following:
1. There is a direct relationship between governance standards and the characteristics of the head of the audit committee with the quality of the audit process, i.e. the more integration between them, the higher quality financial reports are issued, and thus the risk rate and cases of fraud and manipulation are reduced and beneficiaries are able to compare between alternatives and choose the decision.
2. The independence of the head of the audit committee and the definition of the responsibilities and powers of the company’s administrative levels contribute to improving confidence in financial reports and the general efficiency of the company’s financial and administrative operations, and increases the efficiency of the committee’s work and contributes to issuing financial reports characterized by quality.
3. The financial reports issued by the Audit Committee represent the basis of the decision-making process for beneficiaries. The investment decision is one of the most important and difficult decisions. The availability of good financial reports contributes to rationalizing investors’ decisions and increases the degree of certainty for decision-makers in making the appropriate decision.
