應計品質和獨立董監事專業知識背景的關係

Abstract

在現行的台灣法律規定下，大多鼓勵或是要求公司設置獨立董事和獨立監察人，像是上市審查準則、上櫃審查準則、以及上市上櫃公司治理實務守則和新修正的證券交易法，其中在上市審查準則以及上櫃審查準則中，更特別要求獨立董事以及獨立監察人的專業知識背景；在上市及上櫃審查準則中規定:獨立董監事必須具備五年以上的商務、法律、財務、或公司業務所需之工作經驗，且獨立董事及獨立監察人中各至少應有一人為會計或是財務專業人士；可見獨立董監事要發揮其監督公司經營者的功能，必須有相關的專業知識。 因此本研究參考Dhaliwal et al.(2006)的研究架構，探討獨立董監事專業知識背景和財務報導品質之間的關係；本研究財務報導品質的衡量是採用應計品質，所謂應計品質是採用Dhaliwal et al.(2006)研究中修改過的modified version of Dechow and Dichev Model，依據該模型所求出的依變數殘差標準差來表示，而獨立董監事專業知識背景則是區分成三類:會計、財務金融、營運管理。此外加入兩項與公司治理相關的變數，董事會治理強度以及監察人治理強度。研究結果顯示，當公司有良好的董事會治理時，若獨立董監事中，至少有一位是屬於會計專業人士時，該公司的應計品質會較好；而當公司有良好董事會治理，且至少有一位獨立董監事是屬於財務金融專業人士時，公司的應計品質也會較好，但是獨立董監事的營運管理背景則與應計品質之間沒有關係。本研究結論亦支持上市上櫃審查準則有關獨立董監的資格要求，獨立董監事中至少各有一位為會計或財務背景。

Under current Taiwan laws, many of them regulate or encourage the company to select independent directors and independent supervisors, for example the Criteria for Review of Securities Listings, Criteria for Review of Securities over-the-counter listings, Listed and over-the-counter corporate governance practice rule, and the securities and exchange law. Criteria for Review of Securities Listings and over-the-counter listings especially require that independent directors and independent supervisors should have professional knowledge. These criteria regulate that independent directors and independent supervisors must have over-five-years work experience related to commerce, law, finance, or company business and at least one of the independent directors and independent supervisors should be the accounting expert or financial expert. It is that the independent directors and independent supervisors must have related expertise to oversee corporate management. This study is to discuss the relationship between professional knowledge of independent directors and supervisor and financial reporting quality according to the research of Dhaliwal et al. (2006). In this study, I use the accruals quality to measure the financial reporting quality, and divide the expertise into three categories, including accounting expert, financial expert, and management expert. Beside that this study also considers two corporate governance factors, board governance and supervisor governance. The result shows that under the better board governance, the accounting expert and financial expert of independent directors and supervisors are positively related to better accruals quality. The result also supports the Criteria for Review of Securities Listings and over-the-counter listings.