Research On The Influence Of Internal Control And Ownership Properties On The Comparability Of Accounting Information

From the beginning,the goals of internal control are to offer true and intact financial information,provide the company with high quality accounting information and financial reports,consequently,stabilizes the capital markets.It is very necessary to strengthen the internal control in constructing better internal control systems.Internal control is believed to influence the generation and delivery process of the accounting information,thus affecting the quality of a company's accounting information.Comparability is an important characteristic of the accounting information,which helps information users to distinguish the similarities and differences of different financial information,and then make appropriate comparisons between the alternative schemes to make optimal decisions.High quality internal control can be used to curb earnings management which is closely correlated with the comparability of accounting information.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the influences of internal control on the comparability of accounting information.There are amount of accounting and auditing researches on the relationship between internal control and the quality of accounting information.However,most researches are focused on the robustness and correlation of accounting information.The direct influence of internal control on the comparability of accounting information is still seldom explored and analyzed.The socialist market economy is well established in our country,and the comparability of accounting information may be dramatically different for companies of different ownership properties.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical value to investigate the influence of ownership properties and internal control on the comparability of accounting information.In this paper we combined theoretical analysis and empirical analysis to conduct related researches.First,we studied the measurement methods,contributing factors and economic consequences of the comparability of accounting information.Contributing factors and economic consequences of internal control was also analyzed.Later we studied the economic consequences of ownership properties.Then we investigated the relationship between internal control,ownership properties and the comparability of accounting information utilizing theories like information asymmetry theory,signal transmission theory,the equity theory and principal-agent theory.We used the data of listed companies on the A-share Main Board of Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges in 2008-2016 as our analysis sample.Descriptive statistics,correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis were performed on the full sample data and group sample data,respectively.Related results showed that the quality of internal control is an important factor affecting the comparability of accounting information.The higher a company's internal control quality,the stronger the comparability of its accounting information.The “state-owned” ownership property will weaken the comparability of accounting information when other factors were invariant.Compared with central-controlled enterprises,the quality of internal control of non-state-owned enterprises and local state-owned enterprises has a stronger positive effect on the comparability of accounting information.Finally the sample data was verified to guarantee the robustness of above conclusions.It was found that related results showed good agreement with the conclusions,and hence validated the proposed method and hypothesis.Based on the empirical analysis results,we make corresponding suggestions from the government perspective and enterprise perspective,respectively,to offer beneficial and practical guidance in strengthening the comparability of accounting information.In the end,the paper presents the limitations of this study and the areas that need more researches in the future.The limitations are discussed and analyzed,and future research direction of this study is also prospected.