Our study links three research literatures: organizational theory from the management literature, and financial reporting quality and audit effort from the accounting literature. Our contributions are fourfold. First, we develop a comprehensive measure for organizational business strategy that is generalizable across industries and easily replicable. Second, while prior accounting research has examined business strategy as a determinant of compensation (Ittner et al. 1997), accounting control systems (Simons 1987), budgetary usage (Collins, Holzmann, and Mendoza 1997) and in contemporaneous research as a determinant of tax aggressiveness (Higgins, Omer, and Phillips 2011), we contribute to this line of research by providing evidence that business strategy has an even broader application to financial reporting and auditing than previously considered. Third, by relying on organizational theory to categorize companies and their associated business risk, we develop a better understanding of the factors that are ex ante determinants of financial reporting irregularities. Finally, our
results provide evidence that auditors, consistent with authoritative guidance, appear to take a broader, more comprehensive approach in assessing their audit clients’ business risk than what has been represented in the literature using traditional proxies such as client size and complexity. However, improving audits to reduce financial reporting irregularities among prospector clients appears to be an important area for audit practice and future research.