AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

The purpose of this qualitative single-case study was to explore the publicly documented perceptions of the SEC regulators to determine if SOX 404 requirements have been supportive of influencing transparent financial reporting, preventing fraudulent financial statements, or misrepresentation of ICFR. A total of 15 archived, secondary, publicly available documents, representing 15 different SEC regulators? perspectives, were retrieved from the SEC website over a research time frame of July 30, 2002 until November 1, 2010. The samples were explored to identify the common perspectives of the 15 SEC regulators? relative to the effectiveness of SOX 404, and determine the overall perspectives of the holistic SEC entity or single case. Nvivo 8 was used to perform the data analysis and yielded 9 common themes. The findings revealed that although the SEC deemed SOX 404 supportive of influencing transparent financial reporting, preventing fraudulent financial statements, or misrepresentation of ICFR, the Commission was aware that gaps and opportunities for enhancing the law to promote its effectiveness and remove inefficiencies existed. The findings also revealed that the SEC was conscious of the issues, topics, opinions, observations and findings raised by SOX 404 critics and complying companies, and have been attentive, responsive and willing to address to those matters.