Multi-Auditor Judgment and Decision-Making : Some Evidence on the Impact of Gender

Most audit fieldwork is not conducted by a single auditor but by a team of auditors. Researchers have, however, focused heavily on the judgment and decision-making of individual auditors, ignoring the multi-person reality in which auditors have to make judgments and decisions. This study contributes to the literature by examining the performances of mixed and same-sex dyads on a group assignment for a course ‘Financial Statement Analysis and Auditing’. In this quasi-experimental setting, we found a significant association between group performances and sex composition with mixed dyads performing best, followed by all-male dyads, and then all-female dyads. It is suggested that these findings are the result of the prescriptive nature of gender stereotypes activated by the masculine nature of auditing/accounting in general and the task at hand in particular