Determinants of the Readability of SOX 404 Reports

J. Efrim Boritz · Louise Hayes · Lev M. Timoshenko

30 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance Corporate Governance and Financial Management Financial Reporting and XBRL

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines SOX 404 reports with fiscal year-ends between 2004 and 2014 to determine their readability as measured by the FOG Index. We investigate the association between readability and company characteristics, auditor type, opinion type, time period, report content, and report length. We find that the sign and significance of certain associations depend on whether the reports contain material weaknesses. Overall, results show that management's reports are more readable than auditor's reports; longer reports are more readable—contrary to findings for other corporate communications such as 10-Ks; reports of Big 6 firms are less readable than non-Big 6 reports. Interestingly, the Big 4 firms differed in the readability of their reports. Data Availability: Data are available from sources identified in the text.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 30 citations exist upstream.

References

2009How does financial reporting quality relate to investment efficiency?2008Real and Accrual-Based Earnings Management in the Pre- and Post-Sarbanes-Oxley Periods 2008Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence 1968The Technique of Clear Writing.2014Measuring Readability in Financial Disclosures 2007Determinants of weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting 2007Accruals Quality and Internal Control over Financial Reporting 2010The Effect of Annual Report Readability on Analyst Following and the Properties of Their Earnings Forecasts

Cited by

2020The Readability of Sustainability Reporting in New Zealand over time 2019Why does decomposed audit proposal readability differ by audit firm size? A Coh-Metrix approach 2019Proposal readability, audit firm size and engagement success 2023Climate Change Risk Disclosures and Audit Fees: A Text Analytics Assessment 2021Has it become more readable? Empirical evidence of key matters in independent audit reports,

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.