Agency theory, audit committee, and

Agency theory, audit committee, and timeliness of reporting Research on audit committees is mainly based on agency theory proposed by Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Fama and Jensen (1983). According to agency theory, because of separation and divergence of interest between management (agents) and shareholders (principals), the agent may not always act in the best interest of principals creating agency problems such as excess spending, suboptimal investment decisions, and information asymmetry. This may be especially true when a very opportunistic person is involved in the process. The existence of AC is to protect shareholders’ interests through its oversight responsibility in the area of financial reporting, internal control, and external auditing activity (Turley and Zaman, 2004).
The relation between audit committee effectiveness and timeliness of reporting is based on the rationale that if audit committee is effective in performing its oversight duty of financial reporting process, it will affect the quality of financial reporting which may lead to timely presentation of financial information. As stated in the introduction section, there are a number of studies which examine the relationship between audit committee and financial reporting quality using a number of proxies for financial reporting quality. These studies found that the effectiveness of audit committee to some extent is dependent on the characteristics of the committee such as its independence, its frequency of meetings, and its size. Abbott et al. (2004) for example, who investigated financial reporting restatement in the USA during 1991-1999 found that the likelihood of firms restating their annual financial statements significantly decreased if the audit committee conducted meetings at least four times in a year, had at least one financial expert, and all audit committee members were independent. Using firms receiving a qualified audit report as a proxy for bad reporting quality, Pucheta-Martinez and Fuentes (2007) found that audit committee size and the percentage of independent member in the audit committee affected the likelihood firms receiving qualified audit report due to error or non-compliance qualifications. Cohen and Hanno (2000) suggested that strong corporate governance (including an independent audit committee) were likely to increase audit effectiveness and efficiency by reducing the auditor’s perception of client business risk, the auditor’s control risk judgments for specific audit assertions and the amount of planned substantive testing. With regard to timeliness of reporting, Afify (2009) found that the existence of audit committee was likely to reduce the time spent by the auditor to accomplish the audit work. Therefore, the hypothesis is stated as follows:
H1. Audit committee effectiveness is negatively associated with reporting lead time.

Results (English) 3:

代理理论、审计委员会和审计委员会的研究报告的时效性主要是基于代理理论由延森和Meckling提出（1976）、法马和延森（1983）。根据代理理论，由于管理层（主体）和股东之间的利益的分离和分歧（校长），代理可能不总是行为的最佳利益的校长创造代理问题，如超额支出，次优投资决策，信息不对称。这可能是特别真实的，当一个非常机会的人参与的过程中。存在的交流是保护股东利益的监督责任在财务报告内部控制的地区，和外部审计活动（特雷和Zaman，2004）。审计委员会的有效性和及时性之间的关系是基于这样的理由，如果审计委员会在履行其监督职责的财务报告过程中是有效的，它会影响财务报告的质量，这可能会导致财务信息的及时呈现。如引言部分，有一个研究，研究审计委员会和财务报告质量之间的关系，使用一系列的代理财务报告质量。这些研究发现，审计委员会的有效性在一定程度上取决于委员会的独立性、会议的频率和规模等特点。Abbott等人。（2004）为例，在研究财务报告重述美国在1991-1999年发现公司重申其年度财务报表显著下降，如果以每年至少四次会议，审核委员会的可能性，至少有一个金融专家，和所有审计委员会成员的独立。利用接收一个合格的审计报告作为一个坏的报告质量pucheta代理公司，马丁内兹和富恩特斯（2007）发现，审计委员会的规模与审计委员会中独立成员的比例影响的可能性的公司收到的审计报告由于错误或不符合资格。科恩和汉诺（2000）认为，良好的公司治理（包括独立的审计委员会）可能通过降低审计人员的感知客户经营风险提高审计的有效性和效率，针对具体审计实质性测试的断言和计划的审计控制风险的判断。关于报告的及时性，afify（2009）发现，审计委员会的存在是可能减少所花费的时间，审计师完成审计工作。因此，这一假设是如下所述：H1。审计委员会的有效性与报告的领先时间呈负相关。