National office consultations (NOCs) are a mechanism intended to enhance audit quality, consistent with the logic of professionalism inherent in the audit profession. Yet, research indicates that the competing logic of commercialism has become institutionalized in audit firms. We examine how the...

National office consultations (NOCs) are a mechanism intended to enhance audit quality, consistent with the logic of professionalism inherent in the audit profession. Yet research indicates that the competing logic of commercialism has become institutionalized in audit firms. We examine how the...

We conduct a post-implementation research analysis of AS4, a standard guiding voluntary audits of material weakness (MW) remediation disclosures, to understand the reasons for the scarcity of AS4 audits in practice. We use multiple methods (experiments, comment letter analysis, and surveys) to...

We conduct a post-implementation research analysis of AS4, a standard guiding voluntary audits of material weakness (MW) remediation disclosures, to understand the reasons for the scarcity of AS4 audits in practice. We use multiple methods (experiments, comment letter analysis, and surveys) to...

Audit regulators and commentators propose prompting auditors to more fully take an investor’s perspective as a remedy to their concern that auditors underreact to material misstatements. By contrast, we predict that prompting auditors in this manner will backfire, making them less (more)...

To foster positive relationships with clients, audit firms often assign non-decision-making liaisons to engagements (i.e., “relationship partners,” hereafter RPs). Yet, little is known about RPs' influence on disagreements that arise during fieldwork. We conduct an experiment with financial...

While current audit standards explicitly state engagement partner tenure requirements, firms have flexibility in managing the rotation process. We conduct semi-structured interviews with 20 U.S. audit firm partners who share their experiences on topics including how they identify appropriate...

We examine auditors' response to management's statements of confidence accompanying the inquiry explanation regarding a critical accounting estimate in lower versus higher client risk contexts. Recent research finds that management overconfidence is associated with an increased risk of...

Accounting estimates are highly subjective and multiple estimation alternatives often exist for a single account. When addressing audit-related adjustments with clients, auditors must decide whether to discuss all possible estimation alternatives or approach the client with only a single,...

We provide a comprehensive review and synthesis of behavioral experimental literature that examines persuasion in auditing. We organize our review by applying McGuire’s (1969, 1978) five Components of Persuasive Communication: source, message, receiver, channel, and destination from his...