پاسخ به نظراتی درباره "ارتباط بین برآوردهای مادی اروپا و یکپارچگی سرویس گیرنده، فرهنگ و شکایت های قانونی"

Our study examined how culture affects auditors' materiality estimates. Our discussants enumerate a list of factors that could affect an individual auditor's materiality estimates. While the differences suggested by our discussants would make an interesting study, they are not what this research examined. Although our sample includes 181 auditors from seven Western European countries, our focus was how the estimates from each country differed. The reason for using this methodology is that only the average materiality estimates of each country provide an insight into how cultural differences could influence the implementation of international accounting and auditing standards such as materiality. Our research is important because there is no research that indicates that the levels of audit precision are similar among countries.

We wish to thank our discussants Ananda Ganguly and Cynthia Turner for their comments and suggestions on our study. In responding to their comments, we will follow the sequence they used: (1) motivation, (2) theory and design, (3) analysis, and (4) “what do we learn.” In this reply, we introduce research by Au (1999), Husted (1999), and Jeurissen and van Luijk (1998) that was not cited in our original research. The second author became aware of these studies while teaching a course in business ethics during the spring semester of 2001 (i.e., after the paper was accepted for publication). We believe that this additional research addresses our discussants' concern about the strength of our argument that there is an association between Hofstede's (1980) Uncertainty Avoidance construct and materiality.