Presenting a Model for the Effect of Corporate Governance Measures on Audit Report Lag by a Structural Equation Approach

The efficiency of financial reporting is considered as one of important characteristics of annual reporting quality. It is usually hidden in the timeliness of accounting information, which is one of qualitative characteristics of accounting information. The usefulness of information disclosed by companies reduces as lag increases. Corporate governance as the most important controlling and monitoring mechanism has a significant impact on the efficiency of financial reporting, and affects firm value. The objective of this research is to present a model for the effect of corporate governance measures on audit report lag by a structural equation approach in companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. In the research, the independent variables are corporate governance measures, and the dependent variable is audit report lag. The research method is applied-correlational. Data is collected from 148 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange in the time period of 2011 to 2019, and analyzed by Stata 12, SPSS and Smart-PLS. The method used for collecting data is from the Rahavardnovin software. The hypotheses are tested by the multivariate linear regression test and structural equations. According to the results from hypothesis testing, the corporate governance measures of audit committee experience, audit committee size, audit committee independence, ownership concentration (first measure), ownership concentration (second measure) and board independence have a significant effect on audit report lag; however, the variables of audit committee financial expertise, audit committee gender, ownership structure, board size and CEO duality don’t have any significant effect on audit report lag.