Financial reporting complexities: Association with accounting expertise of board and audit committee

Abstract

The purpose of our study is to examine the financial reporting complexity of listed firms in Indonesia and the association between the financial reporting complexity and the accounting expertise of boards (Board of Directors/BOD and Board of Commissioners/BOC) and audit committee members. We use samples of listed firms in Indonesia over the period from 2013 to 2019. We find that financial reporting complexity is negatively associated with the accounting expertise of the BOD, BOC, and audit committee. These results indicate that companies do not try to engage in higher accounting expertise to mitigate the unfavourable impact of financial reporting complexity and that companies tend to use the financial reporting complexity to obfuscate the financial reporting. The novelty of our study is developing an aggregate measure of the financial reporting complexity that has not been used in extant studies. We also have not found any previous studies examining this issue in emerging countries, including Indonesia. The previous study has examined similar issues in the USA, where the USA is a developed country with a high level of investor protection. The varying levels of investor protection may affect the results.