گزارش حسابرسی برای نگرانی از عدم اطمینان: یک بحث علمی Audit Reporting for Going Concern Uncertainty: The Academic Debate

2.1 Looking for a Framework of Analysis: The Seminal Work of Carson et al. (2013) Carson et al. (2012) published a very long working paper titled “Audit Reporting for Going Concern Uncertainty: A Research Synthesis” aimed at outlining the state of the art of the entire plethora of researches related to GCOs. The intent beyond that huge research was fostering the debate and providing the PCAOB with a strong background useful to move on in a fine tuning action of auditing standards related to GC. In fact, Carson et al. mainly reviewed studies coming from the USA (or based on USA data and auditing practices). As a result of Carson et al.’s great efforts, in 2013 a very popular research article, with the same title as the working paper, has been published in Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory edited by the American Accounting Association, one of the best journals on auditing matters worldwide. To our knowledge, Carson et al.’s work represents a cornerstone for moving on with the aim of providing a global picture as regards Audit Reporting for GCU academic debate. Any kind of research project should be accompanied by a review of the existing literature, for which the researcher has to define the relevant territory. This is fundamental for specifying the questions that will be answered throughout the study. Traditionally, a literature review can be structured in different ways, among which it is possible to distinguish the narrative and the systematic ones. Most times an academic debate is based on a systematic literature review (SLR) and only when the topics or fields under investigation are very wide is a more narrative approach recommended. Audit reporting for GCU falls into the latter situation. As a matter of fact, the number of studies all around the world on this topic seem uncountable. That is one of the reasons why Carson et al. have separated studies on GCOs into three main categories: • Determinants of GCOs; • Accuracy of GCOs issued or not issued, by auditors; • Consequences of GCOs on clients and auditors. Within each category they individuated a series of features that feed other sub-clusters of analysis regarding specific aspects. This is particularly true for the determinants of GCO. Theoretically, as we partially saw in Chap. 1, reason(s) behind a GCO can be an indefinite number. Hence, scholars are free to study and detect the reason(s) by using different research methods (theoretical, case studies, archival, experimental etc.). Thus, the GCO research field is an open source even if it is evident that some areas are overexplored and others underexplored. Table 2.1 provides Carson et al.’s categories; Tables 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 provide evidence of the main features for each category.