Digital Commons Network^™

Does Audit Regulation Improve The Underlying Information Used By Managers? Evidence From Pcaob Inspection Access And Management Forecast Accuracy, Brant E. Christensen, Lijun (Gillian) Lei, Sydney Qing Shu, Wayne Thomas

Faculty Publications

Survey evidence and academic research raise the possibility that audit regulation can impact not only the information contained in external financial reports but also the internal information used by management. We investigate this possibility by examining the improvement in management forecast accuracy around initiation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's (PCAOB) international inspection program. Consistent with managers having improved information, we find that managers issue more accurate forecasts following PCAOB inspection access. Multiple additional analyses support that an improved information environment is the mechanism underlying our results, and this effect is distinct from, and incremental to, any effects of …

The Impact Of Audit Technology On Audit Task Outcomes: Evidence For Technology-Based Audit Techniques, Marc Eulerich, Adi Masli, Jeffrey Pickerd, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

As audit technology becomes more widespread, practice and academia are raising concerns about the costs and benefits of these technologies. We examine how internal auditors use technologybased audit techniques (TBATs) and how TBATs impact the efficiency and effectiveness of their audits. We use two surveys and interviews of individual auditors and chief audit executives (CAE) to examine their perceptions of TBATs. Auditors perceive TBATs as beneficial. Specifically, an increase in the use of TBATs is associated with completing more audits, finding more risk factors, providing more recommendations, and decreasing audit days. However, CAEs also perceive TBATs to be costly. An …

The Development Of The Process Mining Event Log Generator (Pmelg) Tool, Steven R. Hawkins, Jeffrey Pickerd, Scott L. Summers, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Process mining is an emerging technology that allows users to visualize all potential variations of business processes within an organization. It holds significant potential for impacting the field of accounting. However, training professionals and students in its use is challenging due to a lack of event data applicable to accounting and auditing scenarios. To address this issue, we developed an easy-to-use tool called the Process Mining Event Log Generator (PMELG) for generating process mining data files for the order-to-cash process. With the PMELG tool, users can create realistic datasets that incorporate key accounting and auditing concepts, such as segregation of …

Improving Psychological Well-Being Of Young Adults By Conducting Family History Research At A Religious University, Barry M. Lunt, Kelly R. Summers, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Prior research suggests that knowledge of one’s family is correlated with, but does not produce, psychological well-being. We test this conjecture, by examining whether participating in family history research (i.e., genealogical research) is associated with psychological well-being above and beyond the effects of knowledge of one’s family, documented in prior research. To test this, we examine whether students enrolled in a university level family history course, improve in family identification, self-esteem, anxiety, resilience, and locus of control more than a control sample. For students enrolled in the family history course, we find an increase in family identification, which in turn …

Corticosteroid-Laba Inhalers Increase Phonation Threshold Pressure (Ptp) And Flow (Ptf) In Rabbits, Christopher Dromey, Kristine Tanner, Heidi J. Robison, Maya Elena Stevens, Ray M. Merrill, Julie Barkmeier-Kraemer, Ben Christensen

Faculty Publications

Objectives: This study examined the effects of a combination corticosteroid plus long-acting beta2-adrenergic agonist inhaler (IC) on rabbit phonation. Methods: White New Zealand male rabbits were assigned randomly to experimental and control groups (n = 11 per group). The experimental group received twice-daily doses of Advair HFA™ (fluticasone propionate 45 mcg and salmeterol 21 mcg) via a veterinary facemask with 1-way valve and spacer; the control group received aerosolized saline. After 8 weeks, animals were euthanized, larynges excised, frozen, and subsequently thawed and mounted on a standard bench apparatus. Phonation was elicited during 15 successive trials, and phonation threshold pressure …

An Angry Face And A Guilty Conscience: The Intrapersonal Effects Of Fake Anger In Negotiation, David Hunsaker, Teng Zhang, Mckenzie Rees

Faculty Publications

Research on anger in negotiation suggests that expressing anger can have detrimental effects on the relationship between the parties but may also improve the expresser’s economic outcomes, resulting in the use of fake anger (i.e., anger that is expressed but not felt) as a negotiation strategy. Based on research on moral emotions, we argue that fake anger in negotiation will lead to expressers’ guilt, which in turn negatively impacts their self-perception and their overall subjective experience of the negotiation. Across three studies (two online and one face-to-face), we consistently demonstrate that fake anger lowers negotiators’ feelings about themselves as well …

Are We Essential, Or Sacrificial? The Effects Of Felt Public Gratitude On Essential Worker Recovery Activities During Covid-19, Hee Young Kim, Sijun Kim, Taeya M. Howell, Sarah P. Doyle, Nathan C. Pettit, Michael Bizzarro

Faculty Publications

COVID-19 has been characterized by unprecedented levels of public gratitude to some, but not all, essential workers. In this research, we integrate insights from the stigmatized occupations and gratitude literature to build theory on the positive and negative relationships between such displays of public gratitude and essential workers’ recovery activities. We argue that felt public gratitude positively relates to adaptive recovery activities (e.g., exercise) and negatively relates to maladaptive recovery activities (e.g., overdrinking). We further explain how felt public gratitude impacts (mal)adaptive recovery activities through (a) felt invisibility and (b) negative/positive affect. We find support for our predictions in a …

How Does Religious Faith Impact Positive Youth Outcomes, Michael A. Goodman, W. Justin Dyer

Faculty Publications

This study investigates the protective aspects of religiosity in young adolescents and explores the potential processes involved. Specifically, we examine the influence of three measures of religiosity—religious salience, intrinsic religiosity, and daily religious experiences—on delinquency and anxiety. The study sample consists of 636 families located in the state of Utah. Additionally, we explore how positive youth development (PYD) constructs may mediate the relationship between religiosity and adolescent outcomes. The findings indicate that religious salience and daily religious experiences are directly and indirectly associated with lower levels of delinquency and anxiety. Furthermore, two PYD constructs—character and connectivity—serve as mediators between religious …

Family Home Evening As A Model For Promoting Family Health, Tommy M. Phillips, Jennifer R. Smith, Alice C. Long, Brandan E. Wheeler, Loren D. Marks, Michael Goodman, Trevan Hatch, Sterling K. Wall

Faculty Publications

One hundred thirty-seven married members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with children participated in a study of Family Home Evening and its relation to family well-being. Results support previous research suggesting that regular family-level rituals and sacred practices benefit families, marriages, and parent-child relationships. While this study‟s results cannot demonstrate any sort of causal link, they do provide very strong correlational evidence in support of the power and value of regular family-level routines, rituals, and sacred practices, as seen in LDS observance of FHE. Implications for the full universe of families are discussed.

Initial Public Offerings And The Local Economy: Evidence Of Crowding Out, Jess Cornaggia, Matthew Gustafson, Jason Kotter, Kevin Pisciotta

Faculty Publications

We test the effect of going public on economic growth in the areas surrounding IPO firms. We focus on IPO-filing firms, thus ensuring that both treatment and control firms are at similar life cycle stages, and use post-filing stock market fluctuations as an instrument for IPO completion. We show that IPOs that are large relative to the size of their counties lead to a 1.1 percentage point relative reduction in annual county-level establishment growth, with similar effects for employment and population growth. There are no corresponding effects for relatively small IPOs. These negative effects appear to be driven by a …

The Effects Of Cryptocurrency Wealth On Household Consumption And Investment, Darren Aiello, Scott R. Baker, Tetyana Balyuk, Marco Di Maggio, Mark Johnson, Jason Kotter, Emily Williams

Faculty Publications

Key Results:

• Retail crypto investors hold crypto as one part of a broader portfolio
• Inflation expectations drive crypto investment
• Marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of crypto wealth is big!
• Households use crypto wealth to purchase housing
• As a result, crypto wealth shocks spill over into local house prices

Who Invests In Crypto? Wealth, Financial Constraints, And Risk Attitudes, Darren Aiello, Scott R. Baker, Tetyana Balyuk, Marco Di Maggio, Mark J. Johnson, Jason Kotter

Faculty Publications

We provide a first look into the drivers of household cryptocurrency investing. Analyzing consumer transaction data for millions of U.S. households, we find that, except for high income early adopters, cryptocurrency investors resemble the general population. These investors span all income levels, with most dollars coming from high-income individuals, similar to equity investors. High past crypto returns and personal income shocks lead to increased cryptocurrency investments. Higher household-level inflation expectations also correlate with greater crypto investments, aligning with hedging motives. For most U.S. households, cryptocurrencies are treated like traditional assets.

Fintech Lending With Lowtech Pricing, Mark J. Johnson, Itzhak Ben-David, Jason Lee, Vincent Yao

Faculty Publications

FinTech lending—known for using big data and advanced technologies—promised to break away from the traditional credit scoring and pricing models. Using a comprehensive dataset of FinTech personal loans, our study shows that loan rates continue to rely heavily on conventional credit scores, including 45% higher rates for nonprime borrowers. Other known default predictors are often neglected. Within each segment (prime/nonprime) loan rates are not very responsive to default risk, resulting in realized loan-level returns decreasing with risk. The pricing distortions result in substantial transfers from nonprime to prime borrowers and from low- to high-risk borrowers within segment.

Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs In Decision Making: Perception Shifts And Goal Activation Bias Decision Thresholds, Jeff Larson, Guy Hawkins

Faculty Publications

A fundamental aspect of decision making is the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT): slower decisions tend to be more accurate, but because time is a scarce resource people prefer to conclude decisions more quickly. The current research adds to the SAT literature by documenting two previously unrecognized influences on the SAT: perception shifts and goal activation. Decision makers’ perceptions of what constitutes a fast or a slow decision, and what constitutes an accurate or inaccurate decision, are based on prior experience, and these perceptions influence decision speed. Similarly, previous experience in a decision context associates the context with a particular decision goal. …

Barriers To A Cybersecurity Career: Analysis Across Career Stage And Gender, Justin Scott Giboney, Bonnie Brinton Anderson, Geoffrey A. Wright, Shayna Oh, Quincy Taylor, Megan Warren, Kylie Johnson

Faculty Publications

The demand for cybersecurity professionals is high—especially for women. Efforts to attract women to cybersecurity careers are not meeting goals of equal representation. Researchers have not yet identified a theoretical rationale for the differences. To provide a theoretical rationale, we investigate barriers to a cybersecurity career based on career stages defined by Super (1957) and gender. Concerns about a cybersecurity career differ between girls, young adult women, and mid-career women. Girls feel an un- awareness of opportunity and requisite training, whereas adult women are concerned that they will be undervalued in a male-dominated field, and mid-career women are concerned about …

Measuring State And Trait Attention Control Using Mouse Movements, David W. Wilson, Jeffrey Jenkins, J. S. Valacich

Faculty Publications

Attention is a scarce resource in an increasingly distracting world. Although computing devices might well be blamed for much of the distraction we experience, these devices also afford an opportunity for feedback and improvement, as seen in a variety of contexts. This paper provides initial evidence that mouse movement data can be used to measure users’ attention control. Attention control refers to the ability to maintain top-down attention to goal-relevant stimuli and resist the distracting influence of irrelevant stimuli competing for attention. During a controlled experiment with conditions of varying levels of distraction, we captured participants’ mouse movements to determine …

Climate Change Risk Perception And Pro-Environmental Behavior: The Moderating Role Of Environmental Values And Psychological Contract Breach, Badar Latif, James Gaskin, Nuwan Gunarathne, Robert Sroufe, Arshian Sharif, Abdul Hanan

Faculty Publications

Purpose – Debates regarding climate change risk perception (CCRP), particularly its scale and impact on social and environmental sustainability, have continued for decades. CCRP is experiencing a renaissance with an increased focus on environmentally relevant behaviors to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, CCRP lacks investigation from the employee perspective. Supported by the social exchange and value–belief–norm theories, this study aims to address the impact of employees’ CCRP on their proenvironmental behavior (PEB) via the moderating roles of environmental values and psychological contract breach.

Design/methodology/approach – The nonprobability convenience sampling technique was used to collect survey data froma sample …

Student Engagement In The Hyflex And Online Classrooms: Lessons From The Covid‑19 Pandemic, Karoly Bozan, James Gaskin, Claire Stoner

Faculty Publications

Student engagement is determined by the degree to which students perceive that their psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are met as prescribed. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its sudden and dramatic shift to mandatory HyFlex (alternating online and face-to-face student attendance) or online learning only, meant less or no faceto- face interactions with peers and faculty, which had an impact on student motivation and engagement in the classroom, as reflected in the National Survey of Student Engagement. This new educational landscape will likely remain in effect to a certain extent, and, thus, there is a need for a deeper …

The Impact Of Weibo Features On User’S Information Comprehension: The Mediating Role Of Cognitive Load, Ying Xu, Jia-Qiong Xie, Fu-Xing Wang, Rebecca L. Monk, James Gaskin, Jin-Liang Wang

Faculty Publications

Social media, such as Microblogs, have become an important source for people to obtain information. However, we know little about how this would influence our comprehension over online information. Based on the cognitive load theory, this research explores whether and how two important features of Weibo, which are the feedback function and information fragmentation, would increase cognitive load and may in turn hinder users’ information comprehension in Weibo. A 2 (feedback or non-feedback) × 2 (strong-interference or weak-interference information) between-participants experimental design was conducted. Our results revealed that the Weibo feedback function and interference information exerted a negative impact over …

How Certain Robot Attributes Influence Human-To-Robot Social And Emotional Bonds, James Gaskin, P. Thomas Fife, Warren Rosengren

Faculty Publications

A growing population of humans are feeling lonely and isolated and may therefore benefit from social and emotional companionship. However, other humans cannot always be available to fulfill these needs, and such in-need individuals often cannot care for pets. Therefore, we explore how robot companions may be designed to facilitate bonds with humans. Our preliminary examination of 115 participants in a scenario based quasi-experimental study suggests that humans are more likely to develop social and emotional bonds with robots when those robots are good at communicating and conveying emotions. However, robots’ anthropomorphic attributes and responsiveness to external cues were found …

Typing Fast Versus Typing Slow: Using Typing Dynamics To Reveal Authentic And Imposter Users, David Kim, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Manasvi Kumar

Faculty Publications

Real-time assessment of users' cognitive states has practical importance, allowing organizations to infer user behaviors. Realizing its importance, prior studies – specifically those using mouse cursor movements – have applied various theories to answer a similar question, i.e., how does a high cognitive load influence the users' device usage behavior? While numerous activities can increase cognitive load, we argue that the mechanisms behind how humans process information can more holistically be explained using Dual Process Theory (DPT) (i.e., when cognitive load is either low or high) and can be applied under a broad range of usage contexts. Using a within-participant …

Key Success Factors For “Real World” Projects: A Principal- Agency Theory Perspective, Degan Kettles, Dan Mazzola, Mary Sumner, Mahesh Raisinghani

Faculty Publications

“Real world” projects are an important component of MIS academic programs. These “real world” projects provide students with problem-based learning opportunities which enable them to address “real world” problems and opportunities. The purpose of this research-in-progress is to determine the key success factors for “real world” projects. The concept of Principal-Agency Theory provides a theoretical lens for understanding these success factors from the viewpoint of students, faculty, and industry sponsors. The SIM academic research team will collect data from project teams across ten universities and for over 250 projects. Having multiple perspectives will contribute to an understanding of how to …

Charting A Course To The Top: Insights From The Fortune 500 Cios And How They Differ From Other C-Suite Executives, Benjamin Richardson, Degan Kettles, Daniel Mazzola

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"We Have Not Been Allowed The Liberty... To Worship As We Please" Nancy Naomi Tracy And The Denial Of Latter-Day Saint Religious Liberty, Derek Sainsbury

Faculty Publications

This article examines the life of Nancy Naomi Tracy as a lens into the Latter-day Saint struggle for religious liberty in nineteenth-century America. Joining the Church in 1834, Tracy endured repeated persecution—from the Missouri expulsions and the 1838 Mormon War to the federal antipolygamy campaigns of the 1880s—yet actively fought for her faith’s constitutional protections. As the only known female electioneer missionary in Joseph Smith’s 1844 presidential campaign, she embodied the Saints’ bold blend of religious conviction and political engagement. Drawing on Tracy’s three personal reminiscences (1880, 1885, and 1896–99), the study explores how her experiences as a wife, mother, …

The Spillover Effect Of Sec Comment Letters Through Audit Firms, Kenneth L. Bills, Ryan Cating, Chenxi Lin, Timothy Seidel

Faculty Publications

This study examines whether auditors serve as a conduit for disseminating Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) views on reporting and disclosure matters as the result of being privy to clients’ SEC comment letters. This examination is important because auditors’ involvement in, and private access to, clients’ comment letters can enhance the timeliness of dissemination and have a constraining influence on reporting or disclosure choices that diverge from SEC views. Among clients with a greater expectation of impaired goodwill that do not receive a comment letter with a goodwill-related comment, we find a greater likelihood of goodwill impairment when the audit …

Does Gender And Ethnic Diversity Among Audit Partners Influence Office-Level Audit Personnel Retention And Audit Quality?, Eric R. Condie, Ling Lei Lisic, Timothy Seidel, J. Mike Truelson, Aleksandra "Ally" B. Zimmerman

Faculty Publications

Motivated by prior literature on organizational identification and 23 semistructured interviews with a variety of U.S. audit partners and directors, we examine whether the gender and ethnic diversity of an office’s audit partners influences the retention of the office’s audit professionals and the quality of the audits conducted by the office. Using hand-collected data on U.S. audit partners, we find that greater levels of (or changes in) diversity in office audit partners’ gender and ethnicity are associated with lower (reduced) turnover among office audit professionals and higher (increased) office-level audit quality. To provide further insight into the audit quality results, …

Reduced Audit Quality Acts: A Review And Organizational Model, Troy A. Hyatt, Douglas F. Prawitt, Kyle M. Stubbs

Faculty Publications

With increasing regulatory focus on improving audit quality, research on drivers of audit quality remains important to academics, professionals and regulators. One compelling branch of this research focuses on auditors' intentional actions that reduce audit quality, often referred to in the literature as reduced audit quality acts (RAQAs). This paper provides a review and synthesis of the RAQA literature, including a unifying definition for RAQAs and a model for organizing past and future RAQA research. With the model, we explore antecedents to RAQAs as well as the discovery of, responses to and subsequent consequences of RAQAs. We also discuss potential …

Balancing Loyalties: A Behavioral Study On How The Quality Of Supervisor-Subordinate Relationships Affects Whistleblowing Intentions, Jace B. Garrett, Douglas F. Prawitt, Kyle Sopp

Faculty Publications

While high-quality relationships among employees yield many benefits to organizations, they may have unintended consequences for whistleblowing. In a first experiment, we investigate whether high-quality employee-supervisor relationships reduce employees’ willingness to report supervisor wrongdoing through an internal hotline. We also investigate whether the quality of such relationships mitigates the effect of evidence strength on reporting intention. In a second experiment, we test the robustness of the effects of relationship quality and evidence strength on employees’ willingness to report wrongdoing identified in our first experiment, but to an external auditor. We also examine two factors that may mitigate the negative effect …

The Pure Language Project, Dan Belnap, Michael Mackay

Faculty Publications

In the summer of 1835, Joseph Smith and his associates purchased four mummies and some papyri scrolls from Michael Chandler.1 That summer Joseph would participate in a project that would produce a fascinating set of texts, referred to today as the Egyptian Language Documents (ELD), used and compiled mostly in Kirtland, but also consulted and expanded in Nauvoo.2 These documents, which include three incomplete variants of what was called an “alphabet” as well as an incomplete “grammar,” integrated a series of characters with explanations.

Current Issues Faced By Controllers, Anthony C. Bucaro, T. Jeffrey Wilks, Christopher Yust

Faculty Publications

We conduct a series of semi-structured interviews with controllers and chief accounting officers from large public and private companies—over half are Fortune 500—to identify the current issues faced by the controllership function. We map these issues into the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA®) Management Accounting Competencies and highlight recent research that addresses these issues and where there are gaps. Our findings suggest three IMA competencies that weigh heavily on controllers’ minds: (1) collaboration, teamwork, and relationship management; (2) information systems and technology; and (3) talent management. Finally, we describe how the insights from controllers suggest important improvements to accounting curriculum …