AN ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE EFFECTS ON AUDIT COMMITTEE MEMBERS OVERSIGHT JUDGMENTS

This paper examines whether experience affects audit committee members ' oversight judgments. A sample of 87 audit committee members complete d an internal control oversight task to evaluate whether experience fa cilitated comparability with a criterion group of external auditors. T he results indicate that both general domain and task specific experie nce made a significant difference in audit committee members' internal control assessments. Of primary importance, members with experience m ade internal control judgments more like auditors than did members wit hout experience. Ancillary results reveal that experienced members mad e more consistent judgments, had higher self-insight, higher consensus , and higher technical content levels for additional items offered tha n did the members without experience. These findings provide some init ial empirical support for suggestions that prior work experience can m ake a difference in audit committee member oversight and highlight the need for additional research across the diverse range of audit commit tee tasks. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.