Accountant’s’ perceptions of
Date
2011-06-15
Authors
Slabbert, Valerie-Joan
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Abstract
During the past decade there have been a number of high-profile corporate
failures, both locally and internationally. This has led to numerous legislative
and regulatory changes, both locally and internationally. In South Africa, the
Auditing Profession Act was released for comment in October 2004 and this led
to the Auditing Profession Act, Act No.26 of 2005, which was signed into
legislation on 16 January 2006; this took effect on 1 April 2006, as did the
Corporate Laws Amendment Act of 2006. The draft Companies Bill of 2007
was released for comment in February 2007 and will replace the Companies
Act of 1973.
The purpose of this study was to research accountants’ perceptions regarding
the effectiveness of legislative changes to the audit profession in South Africa
with regard to the prevention of audit failure. Quantitative, non-experimental
research was conducted to test the propositions developed from the literature
review through a questionnaire that was sent to chartered accountants within
South Africa.
The majority of chartered accountants surveyed agreed that the reputation of
the audit profession in South Africa had been affected adversely by high-profile
business failures internationally and nationally, and that this necessitated the
legislative changes to the audit profession in this country. There are certain
aspects of these legislative changes that will be efficient in the prevention of
audit failure and in ensuring greater independence of the external auditor; this
was the opinion of the chartered accountants surveyed, and included the
functioning of the independent audit committee, legal backing to accounting
standards and increased liability for directors and parties involved in the
preparation of financial statements. Legislative changes that were not
perceived to be efficient included increased liability for the external auditor,
practice reviews and the mandatory rotation of audit partners
Description
MBA - WBS
Keywords
Accounting, Auditing, Accounting regulation, Auditing regulation