Business Commons^™

The Effect Of Hypothesis Framing, Prior Expectation And Professional Trait Scepticism On Experts’ And Novices’ Evidence Selected In A Complex Task, Abhijit Das

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study examines evidence selection strategy among external auditors (i.e. professionals) and accounting students (i.e. novices) in a going concern assessment task considering three factors; hypothesis framing, prior expectation and professional “trait” scepticism as measured by Hurtt (2010) scale. Within this context, the study sets out to accomplish three goals: (1) to re-examine evidence selection strategy based on hypothesis framing and prior expectation, (2) to validate the Hurtt (2010) scale using expert reviews and confirmatory factor analysis and (3) to investigate whether professional trait scepticism influences selection strategy.

Owing to the incidence of high-profile accounting and auditing scandals worldwide, the …

Redefining Internal Audit Performance: Impact On Corporate Governance, Razimah Binti Abdullah

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

One of the preventive measures to situations akin to world financial crises increasingly forwarded is effective internal audit function (IAF) (e.g., Imhoff, 2003; Mohamad & Muhamad Sori, 2011). Internal audit, a component of corporate governance, continues to evolve due to changes in business strategies and requirements placed on it by legislators. The roles of internal auditors and audit committees (ACs), the key personnel in IAFs, are changing to a more value-added approach as business strategies move towards corporate sustainability and organisational excellence. Suggestions forwarded to improve the performance or determining the quality of IAF include effective involvement of ACs in …

Auditor Stress: Antecedents And Relationships To Audit Quality, Mohd Nazli Mohd Nor

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Research on Reduced Audit Quality Practices (RAQP) has consistently shown serious negative consequences in the auditing profession. It has found that under certain pressure levels, auditors tend to engage in RAQP. However, most of the previous studies that had investigated RAQP failed to examine RAQP from a stress model perspective which incorporates stressors, stress measures and stress consequences into the model and to measure the interactions among these constructs. Previous research has mainly focused on the direct effect of stressors (e.g., time budget pressure, leadership styles, individual personality etc.) on RAQP; there is no single investigation that has simultaneously examined …

Resource Allocation And Efficiency In Public Sector Audits, Kar M. Chong

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

In recent years, the push for reform in the Australian public sector audit has placed the Office of the Auditor-General (hereafter OAG) in a more contestable or market- like environment, where the OAG is accountable for an efficient and effective provision of public sector audit. The purpose of this study is to compare the cost efficiency of in-house and contract-out arrangements to deliver financial audits in the public sector. It empirically tests whether there are audit cost and audit fee differences between in-house providers (i.e., the OAG) and contractors (i.e., public accounting firms). The secondary aims of this study are …

Enhancing The Auditor's Fraud Detection Ability: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Maria Krambia Kapardis

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

A contemporary issue of concern to both external auditors and financial statement users is fraud-detection by auditors. The ability of auditors to detect material irregularities, including fraud, should be enhanced to enable them to apply "reasonable skill and care" in carrying out the audit. Such proficiency in fraud detection is needed if the profession is to avoid costly litigation, ever-increasing indemnity insurance and erosion of the profession's credibility. The thesis maintains that such enhancement can be achieved if auditors both utilise knowledge about the aetiology of fraud in psychology, sociology and criminology as well as by synthesising a broad range …

An Examination Of Methods Of Improving Audit Judgment, Janne Chung

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study examined three methods of improving audit judgment, namely inoculation, the group process, and counter explanation. Prior research found that auditors' judgments were not always optimum. An important question this study asked was whether the use of inoculation, the group process and counter explanation leads to more effective judgments. In Experiment One, I proposed that inoculation will reduce the effect of framing so that participants exposed to the inoculation treatment will not display a framing effect, while participants not exposed to the treatment will. In addition, I hypothesised that the relation between audit experience and responsiveness to training has …