Preserving an image of effective monitoring can be just as important as preserving effective monitoring itself. AC-member ineffectiveness due to financial reporting increases the likelihood of AC turnover for both the AC-members who served during the events precipitating the financial reporting failure as well as the “tainted” AC-members (even if they were not serving as AC-members when the events precipitating the financial reporting failure occurred). This result shows that shareholders may take bold and visible actions to “clean house” when such financial reporting failures are revealed. Regarding individual characteristics, under normal circumstances characteristics of an AC-member’s potential ineffectiveness such as multiple board commitments may actually be seen as desirable by shareholders perhaps signaling the quality of the AC-member. However, when shareholder dissent increases these individual characteristics of an AC-member’s potential ineffectiveness increases the likelihood of turnover for that particular AC-members but does not “taint” the other AC-members. That is, characteristics once viewed as slightly positive for specific AC-members become negatives when shareholder dissent increases.

 Kachelmeier, S. J., S. J. Rasmussen, and J. J. Schmidt. 2016. When Do Ineffective Audit Committee Members Experience Turnover?. Contemporary Accounting Review 33 (1): 228-260.

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