Corporate Strategy Differentiation And Audit Fees

At present,China’s economy is in an important period of adjusting its growth rate,changing its development mode,adjusting its economic structure and transforming its development power.The diversification of competitors,diversification of development power and complexity of risk management and control make enterprises face increasingly severe external situation,and the sustainable development is challenged by many challenges.With the further deepening of economic globalization,"Black Swan Event" occurs frequently,and the "changeable" economic environment and the increasingly "white-hot" competition situation intensify the business risks and uncertainties.Faced with the fierce competition environment,choosing the industry conventional strategy is beneficial to improve the legitimacy of enterprises,but it does not bring higher profits than the industry average level.Therefore,more and more enterprises begin to seek strategic differences in order to gain competitive advantage and improve the yield.Scholars at home and abroad have found that strategic differences can lead to increased volatility of corporate performance,decreased comparability of accounting information,and then increased operational risk.Will this impact infiltrate into audit costs and risk premiums,and then affect audit fees?Based on the principal-agent theory,information asymmetry and signal transmission theory and "deep pocket" theory,this paper studies the impact of institutional environment,product market competition and ownership concentration on audit fees caused by strategic differences.The data of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2017 are selected for empirical test.The results show that the bigger the strategic differences of enterprises,the higher the level of audit fees.Further research finds that the relationship between audit fees and low-level strategic differences becomes insignificant,and there is still a significant positive correlation between audit fees and high-level strategic differences.Institutional environment,product market competition and ownership concentration play a moderating role in the impact of strategic differences on audit fees,institutional environment and ownership concentration.Equity concentration restrains the positive impact of strategic differences on audit fees;inter-industry competition promotes the positive impact of strategic differences on audit fees;when enterprises are in a high market competition position,it can effectively restrain the positive impact of strategic differences on audit fees;when enterprises are in a low market competition position,the positive impact of strategic differences on audit fees is amplified and intensification.The empirical results show that auditors pay more attention to the impact of strategic differences among enterprises in areas with poor institutional environment,high competitive industries,low competitive status and low ownership concentration.This not only enriches the categories of influencing factors of audit fees,but also enriches the selection of strategic types for enterprises,establishes and improves non-financial information disclosure system,and perfects corporate governance mechanism and audit fee mechanism.And so on,has certain enlightenment significance.