Audit committee effectiveness: perspectives from South African audit committee members of JSE-listed companies

Abstract

This study investigates audit committee effectiveness from the perspective of South African audit committee members. Data were collected from 10 semi-structured open-ended interviews. The observations of 6 current audit committee members of companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) were analysed and corroborated by the opinions of 2 external audit partners, an internal auditor and a regulator of accounting and governance. This research found that the levels of audit committee effectiveness of JSE-listed companies are poor. Nevertheless, respondents were of the opinion that there seems to have been a marked improvement from 10 or 15 years ago. Poor audit committee effectiveness has been attributed to overreliance on management for information and the lack of diligence to perform independent in-depth enquiry