Corporate Governance Performance of External Auditors

Abstract

The study aims to assess the corporate governance performance of a corporation's external auditors.  It uses mixed methods employing questionnaire as the main data gathering tool which was answered by 1,142 randomly selected external auditors from different corporations. Frequency and Percentage Distribution, Weighted Mean, ANOVA, and ranking were utilized as the statistical tools. The majority of respondents were in the middle management. They had been in the company for 4-6 years. These people were college graduates, have 6-10 related pieces of training/seminars, and have 6-10 years of work experience. Respondents assessed that corporate governance performance of external auditors is graded as very satisfactory in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, punctuality, accessibility, communication skills, responsibility, and accountability when grouped by profile. There were significant differences in respondents' assessment of corporate governance performance of external auditors in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, punctuality, accessibility, communication skills, knowledge, responsibility, and accountability when grouped by the number of years in the company and their work experience. There were no significant differences when grouped by job position level and highest educational attainment. It can be concluded that external auditors have improper communication skills in their corporate governance performance. External auditors should learn to improve financial reports, update knowledge on audits, and attend meetings/ appointments. To improve audit effectiveness and efficiency, the external auditor may collaborate with internal auditors. To improve, external auditors should have initiative, apply professional standards, dispel myths, start from the top, select appropriate targets, increase communication and instigate training.  The findings of this study will be utilized to advance business education by the proper selection of external auditors and evaluation of their corporate governance performance of the management specifically the Board of Directors. Knowing the proper performance of external auditors in the light of corporate governance will help the educators in the business sectors to let their business students be mindful of how to choose the qualified external auditors that will help the business sustain and eventually grow. Likewise, the educators in the accounting and auditing subject should understand well and adapt it to the aspiring external auditors the needed skills that the management needs to see. Future researchers may extend this study by including the corporate governance performance of internal auditors and conduct a comparative study of the internal and external auditors.