External audit governance in Jordanian public shareholding companies: Statutory duties, independence safeguards, and enforcement credibility

Abstract

This study examines external audit as a corporate-law accountability institution within Jordan’s legal framework, analysing how legal mechanisms shape auditor independence and audit effectiveness in public shareholding companies. It focuses on four corporate-law dimensions: statutory audit duties and evidence-access rights, independence safeguards, audit committee engagement, and enforcement credibility. A doctrinal–empirical approach is adopted. The doctrinal analysis interprets how Jordanian company law and binding governance rules constitute the auditor as a shareholder-appointed control organ, prescribe duties that convert verification into legally consequential reporting, and impose incompatibility and conflict rules ensuring independence. The empirical component tests these legal mechanisms in practice through a survey of professionals involved in external auditing, corporate governance, and financial reporting in Jordan, analysed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that enforceable duties and access rights strengthen audit effectiveness, independence safeguards and active audit committee oversight enhance auditor autonomy, and enforcement credibility ensures deterrence and compliance. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that audit effectiveness in Jordan derives from an integrated corporate-law architecture linking mandate, independence, oversight, and enforcement—confirming external audit as a legal institution of corporate accountability rather than a purely professional procedure (Wu & Zhang, 2025).