The role of audit committees among publicly listed companies in Thailand : cases of audit committee oversight of enterprise risk management

This research focuses on the role of audit committees among publicly listed companies in Thailand, a non-Western context when overseeing their companies’ enterprise risk management systems. A mixed methods research approach, including quantitative and qualitative methods was used to gather and analyse the research data. The results reveal that just above a quarter of the participants in the sample believe that companies in which they had worked as part of the audit committee have mature and robust risk management systems in place, while more than half of the survey audit committee chairs/members indicate that their companies have implemented risk management systems, but they require substantial work.The findings demonstrate no significant impact of the perceived higher levels of oversight responsibility for enterprise risk management on audit committees’ judgement competence. However, this study finds that audit committees who perceived higher levels of oversight responsibility of enterprise risk management have a strong positive impact on their perceptions of the quality of enterprise risk management. The findings also show that the audit committees’ judgement competence mediates the association between the audit committees’ activities in overseeing the internal and external audit functions and the audit committees’ perceptions of the quality of enterprise risk management.The qualitative interview results of this study uncover 11 processes that audit committees utilised to perform the risk oversight task: (1) scope of risk oversight, (2) risk oversight as a collective process, (3) understanding of business and risks, (4) scepticism, (5) focus on high-risk, high-impact, (6) challenging and forcing, (7) use of specialists, (8) give advice and recommendations, (9) provide support and assistance, (10) informal processes, and (11) follow-ups.In addition, the findings show that all of interviewees perceived the risk oversight responsibility as important. Such positive perceptions of the risk oversight task influenced audit committee chairs/members of this study to get involve closer in the internal and external audit functions. The findings report that they made a holistic judgement based on two components: information and perception. However, in the last step of the decision-making process, they demonstrate a willingness to accept their decisions under unknown conditions