The Association Between Audit Technology and Audit Delay.

This paper examines the relation between audit technology (structure) and audit delay for Canadian Big Eight firms from 1978 to 1982. The results do not support our expectation of a negative relation between audit structure and audit delay. In fact, firms using structured audit approaches tend to have greater mean delay than firms using unstructured or intermediate approaches in each of the five years. However, the association between structure and delay is weak in terms: of explained variance, although it is statistically significant, conditional on the inclusion of seven other delay-related variables. The results also indicate that unstructured firms gained more clients from 1978 to 1982 than did structured firms. Implications with respect to audit efficiency, as welt as some limitations of the study, also are discussed.