Moderating Role of Chief Executive Officer Gender on the Relationship Between Audit Quality and Growth of Federal Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria

Abstract

Audit Quality is a crucial instrument for ensuring transparency and accountability in both the public and private sectors. This study sought to investigate the moderating role of CEO gender on the relationship between audit quality and growth of federal teaching hospitals in Nigeria. The population of the study consists of twenty-one (21) federal teaching hospitals in Nigeria and the twenty (21) were selected as sample due to sparsity of data. Secondary data were collected from audited annual reports and accounts of the selected federal teaching hospitals from 2015 to 2022 and were analyzed using Residual Maximum Likelihood (REML) Estimate. Among the findings are that auditor’s knowledge has a positive significance on growth, while the auditor’s tenure is positively significant with growth. CEO gender, however, do not significantly moderate the relationship between audit tenure and growth as it does for auditor’s knowledge as a measure of audit quality. The study recommends that federal teaching hospitals in Nigeria should focus more on auditor’s knowledge or specialization in the public health sector when making decisions on appointment of external auditors.