The research detected several weaknesses of fraud companies. Being associated with governance mechanisms, they involve decreased percentages of external directors, increased percentages of firms, and the combination of CEO/COB positions. The firms with audit committees the composition of which also matters present lower proportion as well as those with blockholder ownership. According to the research by Weisbach (1988) and other scholars, firms consisting of insiders proved to be more productive rather than those that focused on outsiders. In the study by Aggrawal et al. (1999), no considerable turnover was discovered in either senior management or director board after fraud identification. However, the above study cannot be utilized for interference as only some of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) violators were discussed.
In his turn, Sommer (1911) distinguishes between the audit committee as a part of the governance and efficient audit committee. In particular, he notes that the number of meetings affects the early detection of fraud along with the critical nature of its performance. At the same time, no crucial difference was revealed between fraud and non-fraud companies in terms of audit quality as a result of research conducted by both Big 4 auditing firms and others. However, other studies found the connection between fraud rates and the size of audit firms. For instance, Palmrose (1988) assumes that Big 8 audit companies are less prone to fraud and serve as a useful tool to monitor potential fraud cases. Thus, the attitudes of scholars concerning the mentioned topic are rather controversial.
Reflecting on the cost of internal improvements, the research shows that they expensive to audit firms. At this point, monitoring components are the focal area of enhancements that seem to be costly. It was stated that fraud companies are likely to encounter even the greater increase in the following sectors: outsiders’ percentage, audit committee independence, financial expertise, and activity, and audit firm quality. The detailed information related to the above assumptions is presented in Figure 1. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the value of these changes represented in Table 3.
From these tests that were provided in two groups, in particular, fraud firms and control firms, it is possible to conclude that fraud firms enhance their reputational funds using the cumulatively increased number of outside directors despite a drop of some indicators. The results also show that fraud companies have a fewer number of financial professionals than control firms. This can be explained by the fact that audit committees also contain a certain number of outside directors. Speaking of the level of Big 4 firms’ use, it can be noted that the difference between fraud and control is manifested according to it.
Summarizing the results of the research and tests, one can note that fraud firms have better opportunities to detect cases of fraud and can switch audit firms after it. In other words, fraud firms are more capable of maintaining a high quality of audit firms. As for the integration of CEO/COB positions, the greater proportion of fraud was discovered in firms that combine these elements. It also seems appropriate to pinpoint that the author of the article detected that fraud firms and control firms have interchangeable differences in outside director percentages and integration of CEO/COB positions. Furthermore, fraud firms are more likely to address challenges and report their information. Thus, the results that were reflected earlier in this paper matches with hypotheses specified by the author.