Digital Commons Network^™

Preparer Opposition And Strategic Implementation Of Governmental Accounting Standards: Evidence From Public Pension Accounting Reform, Abigail Allen, Reining C. Petacchi

Faculty Publications

Widely acknowledged as one of the most controversial standards in governmental accounting, GASB 67/68 radically altered both the recognition and measurement for defined benefit public pensions. The standards require the recognition of previously only disclosed unfunded pension liabilities and increase the magnitude of reported pension liabilities by requiring the partial incorporation of a market-based discount rate. While the recognition proposal was unaltered from its initial conception to the final standards, the discount rate proposal was significantly attenuated after the initial proposal met with unanimous preparer opposition. Accordingly, we examine what incentives drive preparer lobbying positions, whether such lobbying is aligned …

Fairness And Luck: Contract Away Or Come What May?, H. Scott Asay, Jace Garrett, William B. Tayler

Faculty Publications

In practice, managers and employees often enter into risky, uncertain contracts. Prior works shows that managers use ex post discretion to reduce the effect of uncontrollable “bad luck” on employees’ performance-based compensation, but do not use ex post discretion to reduce the effect of uncontrollable “good luck,” due to fairness concerns. We investigate whether ex ante, objective compensation plans can help address the fairness concerns that lead to this asymmetric treatment of uncontrollable events. We provide evidence that compensation plans that account for uncontrollable factors can reduce differences between individuals’ fairness perceptions in good and bad luck settings. However, controlling …

An Fmri Investigation Of The Neurocognitive Processing Of Measures And Strategic Objectives, Paul Black, C. Brock Kirwan, Thomas Meservy, William B. Tayler, Jeffrey O. Williams

Faculty Publications

A central feature of most organizations is the use of measures to represent key elements of performance across multiple strategic objectives. Prior research has demonstrated a tendency for individuals to treat these measures as though they are the higher-order strategic objectives the measures were intended to represent, as opposed to imperfect representations of those strategic objectives—a phenomenon labeled surrogation. We employ an experiment to further understand this phenomenon. In this study, we capture neural activation when processing measures and when processing strategic objectives. We find that differences in brain activity when processing measures and strategic objectives are similar to the …

Perceptions Of Robotic Process Automation In Big 4 Public Accounting Firms: Do Firm Leaders And Lower-Level Employees Agree?, Lauren A. Cooper, D. Kip Holderness, Trevor L. Sorensen, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

The use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a recent innovation in the public accounting industry, and the Big 4 firms are at the forefront of its implementation. This paper examines how the adoption and use of RPA is affecting the perceived work experience of firm leaders and lower-level employees at Big 4 accounting firms. We interview 14 RPA leaders, survey 139 lower-level employees, and compare and contrast their responses. We find that the two groups generally agree that RPA is having a positive influence on the profession. Both groups believe that RPA is positively changing the work employees perform …

The Influence Of Management’S Internal Audit Experience On Earnings Management, Matthew Ege, Timothy Seidel, Mikhail Sterin, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

We examine whether firms with managers that have prior internal audit experience are less likely to manage earnings. This examination is important because the internal audit function is uniquely positioned to provide experiences that could influence future managerial behavior, including limiting the potential negative repercussions of earnings management. We find that firms with managers that have internal audit experience are associated with lower real earnings management but not accruals-based earnings management. Effects are strongest when managers with internal audit experience have greater power or currently hold financial roles, or when there are a greater number of managers with internal audit …

The Status Of Robotic Process Automation, Steven A. Harrast, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Modern information technology (IT) has greatly expanded the capability of companies to coordinate activities and process large numbers of transactions. Unfortunately, large companies often support thousands of individual applications, and the data necessary for financial reporting is scattered across these applications. As applications and data proliferate, companies must link together the applications and systems, often using spreadsheets and expending significant amounts of time in manual data entry and manipulation. This manual work is slow, expensive, and error prone and lacks useful business insights. Also, the employees who must perform these tasks are often overwhelmed and unsatisfied with the mundane work. …

Internal Auditors’ Role In Organizational Innovation: A Social Network Perspective, Margaret H. Christ, Anna Eulerich, Marc Eulerich, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Organizations use innovations to adapt, grow their business, and differentiate themselves from their competitors. However, innovations can introduce new risks to the organization that the internal audit function (IAF) should address. We interview and survey internal auditors about how they respond to innovations, such as the use of emerging technologies, adopted by their organizations. We find that social network theory provides a useful lens through which to interpret our interview results and to guide our survey development and analysis. In particular, we find that the embeddedness of the internal auditors with management, but not with the audit committee, is a …

Brokerage Relationships And Analyst Forecasts: Evidence From The Protocol For Broker Recruiting, Braiden Coleman, Michael S. Drake, Joseph Pacelli, Brady Twedt

Faculty Publications

We offer novel evidence on how the nature of brokerage-client relationships can influence the quality of equity research. We exploit a unique setting provided by the Protocol for Broker Recruiting to examine whether relaxed broker noncompete agreement enforcement generates spillover effects on sell-side analysts. Entry into this agreement reassigns ownership of the client relationship from the brokerage to individual brokers, potentially generating a greater standard of care. Using a generalized difference-in-differences research design, we provide evidence consistent with brokers reducing pressure on analysts to produce optimistic research following protocol entry. This effect is concentrated among less experienced and non-All Star …

A Tale Of Two Index Funds: Full Replication Vs. Representative Sampling*, Travis Dyer, Nicholas Guest

Faculty Publications

We examine the two approaches used by equity index funds to track their benchmark index. The first, full replication, mimics the index with exactness. The second, representative sampling, holds a subset of the index. We find that samplers trade 3-4 times more, have 30-50% higher expenses and fees, and earn 50-70 basis points lower annual returns, which is substantial given index funds’ mandate to limit tracking error to a few basis points. Besides higher expenses and transaction costs, poor stock picking also seems to contribute to samplers’ return underperformance. Overall, our analyses suggest representative sampling is associated with underperformance.

Religiosity From Age 12 To 20: Stability, Change, And Bidirectional Effects Of Attendance, Prayer, And Salience, W. Justin Dyer, Sam A. Hardy, Michael Goodman

Faculty Publications

Religiosity is a protective factor for adolescents, though research has indicated religiosity declines across adolescence. However, little research has examined how various dimensions of religiosity may change across time. With yearly data from a sample of 489 participants, the current study examined rank-order and mean level changes in religiosity from early adolescence (12 years-old) into late adolescence/emerging adulthood (20 years-old). Three dimensions of religiosity were examined, public religious practices (religious service attendance), private religious practices (prayer), and religious salience. Using cross-lagged models, reciprocal relationships between these dimensions were examined. There was significant rank-order stability, though stability was highest for attendance. …

You Can't Get There From Here: The Influence Of An Audit Partner's Prior Non-Public Accounting Experience On Audit Outcomes*, Ling Lei Lisic, Jeffrey Pittman, Timothy Seidel, Aleksandra "Ally" B. Zimmerman

Faculty Publications

We examine the importance of audit partners' prior non-public accounting experience (hereafter, “industry experience”) to audit outcomes. We conducted 20 (nine) semi-structured interviews of audit partners with (without) industry experience. These interviews shed light on industry-experienced partners’ career path choices, perceptions of the challenges and benefits stemming from industry experience, and perceptions of how this experience influences their current audit work. Grounded in theory and the results of these interviews, we empirically examine using a unique hand-collected dataset whether audit partners with industry experience conduct higher quality and more efficient audits. Our evidence implies that industry experience is associated with …

The Impact Of Managerial Discretion In Revenue Recognition: A Reexamination*, Linda A. Myers, Roy Schmardebeck, Timothy Seidel, Michael D. Stuart

Faculty Publications

Although the FASB and IASB conceptual frameworks identify relevance and faithful representation as the fundamental qualitative characteristics of useful information, prior research suggests that revenue recognition accounting standards that restrict managerial discretion resulted in improved faithful representation but reduced relevance. We use the adoption of Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2009-13 and ASU 2009-14 to examine the effects of increased managerial discretion to accelerate revenue recognition in multiple-deliverable arrangements; that is, transactions where vendors sell multiple products or services that are delivered at different points in time. We find that increased discretion results in an increase in the relevance of reported …

Developing The Experience Impact Scale: A Qualitative Study Using A Study Abroad And International Internship Program, Neil Lundberg, Peter Ward, Grant Lundberg, Brian Hill, Jennifer Brown, Ramon Zabriskie, Mat Duerden, Heather Ashby

Faculty Publications

Recent work has identified different experience types, including experience classifications of ordinary, memorable, meaningful, and transformative. This study further clarifies the experience typology through qualitative data analysis of each experience type. Data analysis identified that within each extraordinary experience type, additional subtypes were present. Experience types and subtypes were organized according to the experience typology continuum into a 10-item Experience Impact Scale (EIS), as no instrument to measure experience types or experience impact was available. An expert panel was used to determine the representativeness of the items in the EIS and to provide content-related evidence of validity. Discussion of the …

Sending Children To Camp: An Analysis Of Decision-Making By Family Income, Dan Richmond, Camilla Hodge, Jim Sibthorp

Faculty Publications

Objectives: This study sought to (a) identify the factors most salient to parents when sending their child to summer camp, (b) examine family members’ roles in the camp decision-making process, and (c) compare both by income and other family contextual factors in a sample of parents with a child who enrolled and participated in a summer camp experience.

Methods: Survey data were collected from a total of 354 families that included families from high, middle, and lower incomes. Surveys collected data on parental developmental goals for their child, factors related to camp–child and camp–family fit, and the level of involvement …

Ecology Of Family Experiences: Contextualizing Family Leisure For Human Development & Family Relations, Karen K. Melton, Camilla Hodge, Mat D. Duerden

Faculty Publications

All family leisure is not equal. Yet, little is known about the mechanisms linking different types of family leisure to different human development and family relations outcomes. The Ecology of Family Experiences (EFE) framework provides a sensitizing lens for the study of the conditions under which family leisure is beneficial to individuals and families. Specifically, the framework suggests three domains—Family, Activity, and Time—iteratively interact to generate different levels of individual and family outcomes (i.e., responses, meaning, and development). The EFE necessitates research built on ecologically valid study designs that incorporate innovative measurement approaches. Scholars using such approaches can increase the …

Measuring Social Connectedness During Shared Leisure Activities Using Oxytocin: A Comparison Of Sampling Urine Versus Saliva, Karen K. Melton, Camilla Hodge, Madeline L. Haron, Maria Boccia

Faculty Publications

Leisure experiences are often associated with social connectedness. One measure of social connection underutilized in leisure studies is the neurohormone oxytocin. This methodological note considers issues researchers need to address when incorporating oxytocin in their study design. Noninvasive sources for sampling oxytocin include saliva and urine; however, the decision about which method to employ is not well documented. This study provides the first methodological note on collecting oxytocin in leisure studies and provides a comparison of urine vs. saliva measures for oxytocin in the context of leisure activities. Our findings indicate that urine samples are more sensitive to oxytocin change …

Parent–Child Leisure And Parent Affect: The Role Of Family Structure, Camilla Hodge, Jocelyn Wikle

Faculty Publications

This study evaluates differences in parent–child leisure and parent affect across single- and two-parent families. The Ecology of Family Experiences framework suggests contextual factors such as family structure and the novelty of the activity environment contribute to heterogeneity in how parents experience leisure, partly because constraints may differ across family structures. Using a large, nationally representative data sample of parents from the American Time Use Survey (N = 78,353), this study shows single-parents experience leisure deficits compared to other parents, and leisure deficits are greatest in home-based leisure. Additionally, using a subsample (N = 16,214), we found that at-home leisure …

Ecology Of Family Experiences: Contextualizing Family Leisure For Human Development & Family Relations, Camilla Hodge, Kelly D. Chandler, Karen K. Melton, Kelly L. Hoke, Jennifer Blodgett

Faculty Publications

Research on family communication in the leisure context has been limited to retrospective survey reconstructions of perceptions of communication patterns. This study examines the validity of sociometric badges for measuring family communication in real-time. Seven families (married, two-parent families with at least one child ages 4–17 years) wore sociometric badges during a 30-minute leisure activity in a lab setting. We compared mean badge estimates of family communication duration to mean coded video data from the same 30-minute sessions. Intraclass correlation coefficients indicated sociometric badges are not as reliable as video-coded estimates of speech; however, among parents, non-significant mean comparisons partially …

Experience Design And The Origins And Aims Of Leisure Studies: Shifting The Focus From Context To Experience, Mat D. Duerden

Faculty Publications

This article, adapted from the 2019 Butler Lecture at the NRPA National Research session, provides an overview of the origins, development, and potential future trajectory of the field of leisure research. Economic and societal trends of the last few decades may signal the need for the field to intentionally transition its focus on leisure as a context to leisure as an experience. More specifically the field needs to actively consider how insights gained from 60 years of research on leisure experiences can be applied to contexts beyond leisure. To illustrate the possibility of such a shift, lessons learned from transitioning …

Changing The Business Narrative: A Guide To Successful Experience Offerings, J. Robert Rossman, Mat D. Duerden

Faculty Publications

Purpose

Design/methodology/approach

Digital Behavioral Biometrics And Privacy: Methods For Improving Business Processes Without Compromising Customer Privacy, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, D. Čišić

Faculty Publications

To enable people to interact with online websites and systems, browsers capture a variety of events that occur on the page—such as how a person is moving the computer mouse, what a person clicks on, what a person types, and whether a person is scrolling. These events represent a user’s behavior on a page, referred to as the DOM or Document Object Model, and are recorded at a millisecond precision rate (e.g., the exact millisecond timestamp when a key goes down and when it comes back up). Research and practice alike have found that these behavioral events can provide powerful …

The Path Of The Righteous: Using Trace Data To Understand Fraud Decisions In Real Time, Markus Weinmann, Joe Valacich, Christoph Schneider, Jeffrey Jenkins, Martin Hibbeln

Faculty Publications

Trace data—users’ digital records when interacting with technology—can reveal their cognitive dynamics when making decisions on websites in real time. Here, we present a trace-data method—analyzing movements captured via a computer mouse—to assess potential fraud when filling out an online form. In contrast to incumbent fraud-detection methods, which analyze information after submission, mouse-movements traces can capture the cognitive dynamics of a decision to be fraudulent as it is happening. We report two controlled studies using different tasks, where participants could freely commit fraud to benefit themselves financially while we captured mouse-cursor movement data. We found that participants who entered fraudulent …

When Is Enough, Enough? An Examination Of Student Engagement When Watching Online Group Project Presentations, Manasvi Kumar, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, David Kim

Faculty Publications

In traditional face-to-face classes, conventional wisdom suggests that delivering and watching group project presentations is a valuable learning experience. In this research, we examine the limits of student engagement and learning in an asynchronous online context. Specifically, 249 undergraduate students were assigned to perform peer evaluations of multiple ten-minute project presentations. The online learning platform collected objective viewing behavior for each student, allowing us to use viewing time as a proxy for engagement. We also collected self-reported attitudes towards the assignment, finding that while students value providing feedback, they do not consider it a valuable use of their time. Students …

What Makes Health Data Privacy Calculus Unique? Separating Probability From Impact, Mark Keith, Autumn Clark, Tamara Masters, Curtis Wigington

Faculty Publications

Patient health data is heavily regulated and sensitive. Patients will sometimes falsify data to avoid embarrassment resulting in misdiagnoses and even death. Existing research to explain this phenomenon is scarce with little more than attitudes and intents modeled. Similarly, health data disclosure research has only applied existing theories with additional constructs for the healthcare context. We argue that health data has a fundamentally different cost/benefit calculus than the non-health contexts of traditional privacy research. By separating the probability of disclosure risks and benefits from the impact of that disclosure, it is easier to understand and interpret health data disclosure. In …

Uncommon Ground: Grant Wood And Russell Lee's Divergent View Of Iowa, James R. Swensen

Faculty Publications

GRANT WOOD'S American Gothic (1930) has likely been reproduced, parodied, and lampooned more than any other painting in American history (Figure 1). As scholars Wanda Corn, Steven Biel, and others have observed, the scene of an Iowa farmer and his daughter (often erroneously thought to be his wife) has proven to be remarkably adaptable for nearly a century.¹ An early example of its adoption occurred 11 years after Wood's work was finished, when it was appropriated by Gordon Parks, a young Black photographer. Created for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and under the aegis of administrator Roy Stryker, Parks …

Embracing Brain And Behaviour: Designing Programs Of Complementary Neurophysiological And Behavioural Studies, C. Brock Kirwan, Anthony Vance, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Bonnie Brinton Anderson

Faculty Publications

NeuroIS—the methods and knowledge of neuroscience applied to the information systems (IS) domain—has become an established research field within the IS discipline. A key advantage of NeuroIS is its ability to provide insights into human cognition beyond those obtained using behavioural techniques alone. Nevertheless, in neuroscience, there is renewed interest in examining behaviour together with neurophysiological methods to better inform our understanding of neural processes. In this research opinion article, we argue that in the field of NeuroIS, there is an opportunity for hybrid programs of study that combine neurophysiological and behavioural methods in a complementary manner. We outline four …

Incremental Improvements: Examining Instructional Changes And Rationales Of K-12 Online Teachers Using The Picrat And 4e Frameworks, Jered Borup, Rocio Quiroga Velasquez, Charles R. Graham, Leanna Archambault, Royce Kimmons

Faculty Publications

Teacher preparation programs have been slow to prepare teachers for the online environment, leaving many online teachers needing to learn on the job. However, little research has examined how online teachers grow as educators. One way to better understand this growth is to examine the changes online teachers make in their instruction and their rationales for making them. In this qualitative case study, we surveyed online teachers three times during an academic year regarding their instructional changes. Participants described these changes and categorized them on a modified PICRAT matrix to indicate if the changes made student learning more passive, interactive, …

Students Coming Prepared To Class? A Review Of The Literature With A Call To Research, Melissa P. Larson, Jace Linnell

Faculty Publications

In this literature review, we show that little attention has been given to pre-class learning in a flipped classroom setting. To support learning, a flipped classroom shifts the learning of basic content from a classroom setting to a pre-class setting, thereby freeing up time within class for more active learning activities. Active learning activities support student-centered learning as peers collaborate with deep application of pre-class learning concepts. Thus, higher-order skills of critical thinking and lifelong learning, which are valued in the accounting education curriculum and profession, can be developed through a flipped classroom pedagogy. However, if pre-class learning is not …

Publication Benchmarking Data Based On Faculty Promoted At The Top 200 Worldwide Accounting Research Institutions, Jared S. Moon, Scott L. Summers, Nathan J. Waddoups, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

The primary purpose of this paper is to update and extend past promotion benchmarking studies. We update prior benchmarking studies by providing publication benchmarking data for faculty promoted between 2013 and 2019, inclusive. We extend prior benchmarking studies by evaluating a larger number of institutions (the top 200 worldwide accounting institutions), using a more global journal list, and providing sensitivity analyses between journal lists. We group institutions based on rankings and report a possible minimum publication hurdle for each group in each journal category. In addition, we provide data on the mix, or percentage, of publications in each journal category …

Asynchronous Video Interviews And Artificial Intelligence: A Multi-Study Exploration, Tanner Skousen, Jacob Steffen, Cherileigh Chandler, Warren Rosengren, James Gaskin, Thomas O. Meservy

Faculty Publications

Asynchronous video interviews (AVIs) provide scalable, low-cost opportunities for matching interviewees and organizations. However, the implications of a shift from synchronous interviews aren’t fully understood, especially when design choices such as AI evaluations are employed. To better understand the impact of AVIs, we undertook an exploratory qualitative study in addition to an experiment. The first study involves 100 qualitative responses and exploratory quantitative tests on the relationships between coded values and demographic and trait variables of the respondents. Our second study tests the impact of AI feedback using a large online AVI service while accounting for various disadvantaged groups that …