Further Evidence on the Auditor's Going-Concern Report: The Influence of Management Plans

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a study examining whether auditors' going-concern reports are associated with management plans as directed in SAS No. 59. Proxies for management plan information are taken from management's discussion and analysis (MD&A), the 10-K, or the annual report. The paper extends work by Mutchler (1985) and Chen and Church (1992) by modeling and testing the association between the auditors' going-concern report and three types of management plan disclosures. After controlling for financial condition, size, default status, and the propensity to voluntarily disclose information, the results of the study indicate that auditors' going-concern reporting decisions are strongly linked to publicly available mitigating information relating to certain management plans. In particular, plans to issue equity and to borrow additional funds exerted the strongest association with the issuance of an unqualified opinion.