Whether Audit Committee Financial Expertise Is the Only Relevant Expertise: A Review of Audit Committee Expertise and Timeliness of Financial Reporting

Abstract

This study reviews the literature on audit committee expertise and financial reporting timeli
ness. Financial reporting timeliness and audit committee expertise are two areas of research 
gaining the attention of a large number of stakeholders because they contribute to the reliability 
and the relevancy of financial reporting. Indeed, the focus of this review is primarily on the 
recent developments in the pertinent literature in order to show the limitations of such research 
and encourage future research to overcome these limitations. By also looking at the develop
ment of the audit committee expertise literature, this study concludes that (1) like most audit 
committee literature, financial reporting timeliness literature continues to assume the absence 
of the contribution of expertise other than financial expertise, and ignore the role of audit com
mittee chair; (2) most of this literature fails to find a significant effect because it ignores the 
interaction among corporate governance mechanisms. Accordingly, this study posits that ignor
ing the issues raised in such research by future research would lead to major mistakes in re
forms relating to how the quality of financial reporting can be enhanced.