The Impact of Auditor Workload and Joint Auditing on the Timeliness of Financial Statements: The Moderating Role of Audit Task Complexity and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tenure Evidence from Companies Listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange

The objective of this research is to study and investigate the impact of auditor`s workload and joint audit on financial statements timeliness of non- financial firms listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange, in addition to investigating whether impact of workload and joint audit on timeliness is moderated by audit task complexity and CEO tenure. Using sample of 779 firm-year observations collected from 169 nonfinancial firms listed on the Egyptian stock exchange during the period from 2018 to 2022 which belong to fifteen non-financial sectors. The study`s findings revealed that there is a significant negative relationship between auditor`s workload and timeliness while joint audit is significantly improving timeliness, furthermore, audit task complexity (CEO tenure) significantly decreases (increases) timeliness of financial statements. Additionally audit task complexity and CEO tenure moderate the impact of auditor`s workload and joint audit on timeliness, where audit task complexity (CEO tenure) weakened (strengthened) the negative (positive) relationship between auditor`s workload (joint audit) and timeliness. Modified audit opinion, client`s loss, and leverage decrease the timeliness of financial statements while client`s size, profitability, and Big 4 auditors enhance timeliness.
Robustness test (Sensitivity analysis), through changing the measurements of research variables, has revealed that measuring auditor workload using busy season gives the same significant negative relationship between workload and timeliness in addition to complexity and CEO tenure are moderating this relationship. Measuring joint audit using the combinations of involved auditors has not changed the related results regarding the significant positive relationship between joint audit and timeliness and the moderating effect of complexity and CEO tenure. Furthermore, complexity and CEO tenure do not moderate the relationship between workload and timeliness when complexity is measured based on square root of client`s subsidiaries and CEO tenure is measured using a dummy variable reflecting the length of CEO period keeping his position. Measuring timeliness using total delay has led to an insignificant relationship between joint audit and timeliness.
Additional tests have revealed that complexity and CEO tenure together failed to moderate the relationship between workload and timeliness and the relationship between joint audit and timeliness. Finally, splitting the whole sample into two subsamples, the first one includes observations related to joint audits while the second subsample includes the observations representing single audits, has revealed whether in joint or single audits there is a significant relationship between auditor`s workload and timeliness which indicates the inactive role of joint audit related to mitigating the negatives consequences of auditor`s workload, where there is an insignificant difference between the slope of auditor`s workload of the two subsamples.