How to improve the quality of economic responsibility audit is an important task for grassroots economic responsibility auditors. Through several years of economic responsibility audit practice, the author believes that the current institutional contradictions of economic responsibility audit mainly exist in the following problems.

Keywords: economic responsibility audit system contradictions

Economic responsibility audit refers to the audit of the performance of economic responsibilities by the legal representative or business contractor of enterprises and institutions during their term of office or contract period. The main purpose of economic responsibility audit is to distinguish the responsibilities of economic responsible persons in the economic activities of their departments and units during their tenure, and to provide reference for organizing personnel departments, discipline inspection and supervision organs and other relevant departments to examine and use cadres or honor contracts.

First, the contradiction of audit independence

Audit independence is the soul of audit work, and economic responsibility audit has specific requirements for audit independence. As we all know, the independence of audit is mainly the independence of audit subject. The independence of the audit subject is also determined by its position in the audit relationship. In the previous analysis of audit independence, we only analyzed the audit relationship and its status as the audit subject from the perspective of the separation of property ownership and management right. Under the condition of separation of "two rights", the property owner entrusts his assets to other people with management ability, and the property manager assumes the economic responsibility of entrusted management of assets after accepting the entrustment of the property owner. The owner entrusts a "third person" who has no economic interest relationship with the owner and the property manager to supervise the entrusted economic responsibility of the property manager, so as to urge the owner to faithfully and effectively perform its entrusted responsibility.

The absolute independence of economic responsibility audit requires the absolute independence of the audit subject. At present, China's economic responsibility audit is relatively independent, and there is a sharp contradiction between the audit subject and the absolutely independent audit requirements. The main body of this contradiction is that the confusion of audit entrustment relationship will inevitably lead to the wrong path of economic responsibility audit towards relative independence. Whether it is the factory director's (manager's) departure audit or the contract management responsibility audit, in some places, government audit, social audit and internal audit are combined. In the term of economic responsibility audit, people's thinking has not been liberated from the formula of traditional planned economy. In some places, the main person in charge of the enterprise is audited for economic responsibility, and a piece of paper is sent to the internal audit for review. In essence, the establishment of this entrustment relationship lacks the objective basis of entrusted economic responsibility, and this entrustment is not established. In some units, it is impossible for internal audit to reach a fair and objective audit conclusion by auditing the main person in charge of the enterprise.

Second, the contradiction of audit entrustment mode.

The audit relationship between the audit subject and the audited entity can only be established through the entrustment of the audit report receiver or the audit authorizer. Due to the different ways of establishing audit relationship, there are two kinds of entrustment: organizational entrustment and institutional entrustment. The so-called organizational entrustment means that enterprises, institutions or government agencies, as economic organizations, use written agreements or contracts to invite accounting firms and other audit institutions to audit according to the scope and content of entrustment. Under this entrustment mode, economic organizations can determine the audit purpose, audit object scope and audit time according to their own needs. Audit institutions must conduct audit verification according to the audit purpose, audit object scope and audit time agreed in the audit agreement or audit contract, and make corresponding types of audit reports according to the different situations of audit evidence collection. This way of audit entrustment is mainly the way of social audit accepting entrustment.

In practical work, the tendency of organizing economic responsibility audit is very obvious. The "Two Interim Provisions on Economic Responsibility Auditing" issued by the General Office of the Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council clearly pointed out that the organization and personnel department and the discipline inspection and supervision organ should put forward entrusted suggestions to the auditing organ to audit the economic responsibility of leading cadres during their term of office, and the auditing organ should carry out the audit according to law. At present, in actual operation, according to the "two interim provisions" of the "two offices", the organization and personnel department or the discipline inspection and supervision department entrusts and issues a power of attorney, and the audit institution conducts economic responsibility audit according to the entrustment. In practical work, the main task of the organization and personnel department is to assess and manage cadres, and the main task of the discipline inspection and supervision department is to check the cadres' violations of discipline and law, and punish the party member cadres who violate discipline and law, or hand them over to other organizations for handling. The audit client and the audit implementer have different working objectives and different natures, which may easily lead to the deviation between the audit results and the audit objectives.

Third, the contradiction between the determination and division of audit coverage.

Judging from the coverage of government economic responsibility audit, under the current system in China, there is a prominent contradiction between theoretical distinction and practical distinction. Judging from the coverage of economic responsibility audit of enterprise units, the economic responsibility audit of an enterprise only includes the chairman. In the state-owned and state-holding enterprises that implement modern enterprise system reform, due to the need of establishing internal control mechanism, the mode of separating chairman from general manager and decision-making from operation is implemented. If only the chairman of the board is audited, but not the general manager, the coverage of economic responsibility audit is obviously very small. The contradiction arising from the coverage of economic responsibility audit will have an important impact on the overall effect of economic responsibility audit. In the economic responsibility audit, there are contradictions in determining the audit scope and problems in distinguishing economic responsibility. Correctly distinguishing the individual responsibility and collective responsibility of leading cadres in the process of performing their duties, and clarifying the nature of their economic responsibility behavior are the basis for fairly and objectively evaluating the performance of leading cadres' economic responsibility during their term of office. First, it is difficult to divide the responsibilities of predecessors and successors. Second, it is difficult to distinguish between individual responsibility and collective responsibility. Third, it is difficult to distinguish between direct responsibility and indirect responsibility.

Four, the contradiction of audit cooperation mechanism

Economic responsibility audit is not an independent activity, it has a very close cooperative relationship with auditors and audited units, thus forming an organic audit cooperation mechanism. However, this cooperation mechanism is not perfect in practical work, and some contradictions are very prominent. The main contradiction of the coordination mechanism of economic responsibility audit is:

1. Contradictions between audit subjects and cooperation

In practical work, the relationship between audit institutions and audit objects mainly refers to the relationship between audit institutions and organizations, personnel and discipline inspection departments. In dealing with this relationship, some organizations and personnel departments and discipline inspection departments are not serious enough.

2. The contradiction between audit and verification.

The verification and cooperation of economic responsibility audit includes the cooperation of the audited entity, the cooperation of the audited entity itself and the cooperation between the auditing organ and other law enforcement organs. At present, due to the insufficient publicity of economic responsibility audit, people think that economic responsibility audit is to find problems, and the audited units and auditees are unwilling to actively cooperate with the audit work regardless of whether there are problems or not.