Accounting Commons^™

Surrogation Fundamentals: Measurement And Cognition, Paul Black, Thomas Meservy, William B. Tayler, Jeffrey O. Williams

Faculty Publications

Measurement is a fundamental part of accounting. A primary purpose of measurement is to provide more concrete representations of abstract strategic objectives. A potential consequence of using measures to proxy for less-tangible strategic constructs is the tendency for managers to fall prey to surrogation, losing sight of strategic constructs and behaving as though measures are the constructs of interest. We show that surrogation is a nonconscious process. We also extend understanding of the conditions necessary for surrogation to occur by showing that mere awareness of measurement (even absent compensation) is sufficient to induce surrogation. These findings have implications for any …

Do We Matter? The Attention Policy Makers, Academics, And The General Public Give To Accounting Research, F. Greg Burton, Scott L. Summers, T. Jeffrey Wilks, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Many question the value of accounting scholarship to society. We compared the attention the general public, policy makers, and academics give to academic accounting research relative to other business disciplines and other more general disciplines (economics, psychology, and other sciences). The results indicate that accounting research receives significantly less attention from the general public than all other disciplines and also performs relatively poorly in receiving policy makers’ attention compared to both economics and finance. Articles in other disciplines’ elite journals cite relatively little of accounting’s elite-level publications, but non-elite journal articles cite accounting research in similar numbers to other disciplines. …

Prepare For Takeoff: Improving Asset Measurement And Audit Quality With Drone-Enabled Inventory Audit Procedures, Margaret H. Christ, Scott A. Emett, Scott L. Summers, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Auditors increasingly employ technologies to improve audit quality. Using a design science approach, we examine whether using drones and automated counting software can improve audit quality and thereby improve financial reporting. We assess three dimensions of audit quality—efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of audit documentation. We provide evidence that auditors can perform inventory counts with these technologies much more efficiently than they can with manual techniques, decreasing count time in our study from 681 hours to 19 hours. At the same time, auditors can maintain or improve audit effectiveness with these technologies, decreasing error rates in our study from 0.15% to …

New Frontiers For Internal Audit Research, Margaret H. Christ, Marc Eulerich, Ronja Krane, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Internal audit provides useful and valuable services to organizations and research has established its importance in improving corporate governance. However, the body of internal audit research is still small. Further, there are many new and emerging topics for which little is known and practitioners would like guidance. Based on surveys, interviews, and discussions with practitioners, we identify three broad areas for additional research: information technology, staffing and personnel development, and agile auditing. In each area, we describe the current practices and discuss the relevant accounting literature, noting gaps where additional inquiry is needed. We also provide a list of testable …

Anonymous Equity Research, Travis Dyer, Eunjee Kim

Faculty Publications

Crowdsourced financial information platforms often allow content contributors to publish equity research anonymously. This study examines whether investors value or discount information in anonymous equity research. In the short window around research releases, we find that investors’ stock price reaction to anonymous research is muted in comparison to nonanonymous research. Consistent with credibility concerns influencing investor response, we document that this discount to anonymous research dissipates as the monitoring of content contributors intensifies and as authors develop a reputation for high-quality reporting. In addition, we perform a content analysis on the research reports and find that the muted market reaction …

Does Visibility Of An Engagement Partner’S Association With Recent Client Restatements Increase Fee Pressures From Non-Restating Clients?, Wuchun Chi, Ling Lei Lisic, Linda A. Myers, Mikhail Pevzner, Timothy Seidel

Faculty Publications

We examine whether engagement partners who have recently been associated with client restatements experience increased audit fee pressures from their non-restating clients. Using data from the United States (U.S.) and Taiwan, we find evidence of lower audit fees among non-restating companies whose audit engagement partner was recently associated with another client’s restatement. These findings are generally strongest when the partner-associated restatement is more prominent or severe, and in the U.S., when non-restating clients are in the same industry as the restating client. Although we find very limited evidence that fee pressures lead to lower quality audits for these partners’ other …

Determinants And Consequences Of Noncompliance With The 2013 Coso Framework, Kunsu Park, Juan Qin, Timothy Seidel, Jian Zhou

Faculty Publications

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires firms to use a ‘‘suitable framework” as a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting. The COSO 1992 framework was the most commonly used suitable framework until it was superseded by the COSO 2013 framework. Because strict compliance with the updated framework was not enforced by regulatory authorities, a nontrivial number of firms did not comply in a timely fashion. We investigate determinants and consequences of noncompliance with the COSO 2013 framework following the supersession of the COSO 1992 framework. We find that noncompliance is positively associated with proxies …

Beyond Borders: Uncertainty In Supragovernmental Tax Enforcement And Corporate Investment, Zackery D. Fox, Martin Jacob, Jaron H. Wilde, Ryan J. Wilson

Faculty Publications

Amid growing globalization, many countries have offered tax incentives to attract corporate investment. Prior research studies the role such incentives play in firms’ location and investment choices. However, we have limited evidence on the role that uncertainty about the intensity of future tax enforcement plays in those decisions. In 2013, the European Commission (“E.C.”) abruptly began investigating tax ruling practices of several countries in response to allegations that certain firms received preferential tax treatment (“state aid cases”). We use this setting to study the economic consequences of increased uncertainty about future tax enforcement. We find evidence consistent with significant reductions …

Proposed Statement On Quality Management Standards: A Firm’S System Of Quality Management, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants. Auditing Standards Board

Exposure Drafts, Comment Letters, and Statements of Position

No abstract provided.

Mapping The Knowledge Of Islamic Accounting Studies On Shariah Audit: A Bibliometric Analysis, Luqman Hakim Handoko, Sepky Mardian

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The issues of shariah audit appeared more than three decades ago along with the progress of the Islamic financial industries. But it is challenging to obtain a study explaining the current state of shariah audit research to date. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the research on the Shariah audit. Thus, this study aimed to analyze and visualize the current state of shariah audit using a bibliometric approach. The bibliometric analysis was conducted by using VOSviewer software. To fulfill this goal, the keywords such as shariah audit, shariah auditing, and its variations were searched from the Scopus database. The articles …

Project Task Force - Conceptual Framework, Independence Standards Board

Association Sections, Divisions, Boards, Teams

No abstract provided.

Corporate Social Responsibility And Firm Risk: Egypt’S Case, Dina Hassouna, Rania Abdelfattah

Business Administration

Studies amongst developed countries have extensively investigated the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance. However, due to lack of research in the Middle East, especially in Egypt, the association between CSR and firm risk remains much less understood (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2015). Therefore, this paper is one of the very few studies that investigate the impact of CSR on firm risk amongst developing countries. A sample of 31 Egyptian listed companies was examined over four years, from 2011 to 2015. We test the impact of CSR on firm risk using fixed and random effects estimation models. We …

Subjective Evaluation Of Professional Employees: Work-Day Duration As A Heuristic To Evaluate Output, Sara Wick

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of my dissertation is to investigate how information that should not signal output quality influences managers’ evaluations. To address this objective, I pose the following research question: In a setting where professional employees generate output that cannot be evaluated objectively, will managers use work-day duration to subjectively evaluate the quality of their output?

I address my research question using two experiments where I vary employees’ work-day duration relative to their peers (short versus equal) and the purpose of the evaluation (bonus versus promotion) while observing how supervisors make subjective quality evaluations about their output. I find that when …

Let The Punishment Fit The Crime: How Retributive Fairness Perceptions Influence Observers’ Tax Compliance Intentions, Tisha King

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of my research is to investigate how perceptions of retributive justice influence tax compliance. I address this objective by proposing two research questions: (1) How do taxpayers perceive the propriety of punishment for tax evasion? (2) How and when are observers’ compliance intentions influenced by perceptions of fairness disclosures about a specific retributive outcome, and the presence of a fairness-relevant disclosure?

To address the first research question, I conduct a survey of 331 adult Canadian taxpayers to ascertain the extent to which taxpayers perceive punishments for tax evasion as fair or unfair. I find that an appropriate punishment …

The Future Of Auditing: An Analysis Of Ai Implementation In The Big Four Accounting Firms, Alexander Michael Heye

Honors Theses and Capstones

The implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has become somewhat of a hot topic within the modern business world. Many companies have chosen to embrace the potential that these systems have on the ways we can conduct business, while others are hesitant to “dip their toes” in the figurative waters of AI research and utilization. Auditing is no different from other industries in that firms are excited to see what potential these new innovations have in store for promoting a faster, more efficient, and more accurate audit. This review peers into how some Big 4 firms have made the first …

Business Risk And Attest Service Fees: Understanding The Effect Of Low Fed Interest Rates On Bank Audit Fees, Lucas Erik Jones

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On The Issuance Of Going Concern Opinions And Financial Restatements, Jessica Oswald

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Living Up To Your Codes? Corporate Codes Of Ethics And The Cost Of Equity Capital, Hong Kim Duong, Marco Fasan, Giorgio Gotti

Accounting Faculty Publications

Purpose-

Previous literature provides mixed evidence about the effectiveness of a code of ethics in limiting managerial opportunism. While some studies find that code of ethics is merely window-dressing, others find that they do influence managers' behavior. The present study investigates whether the quality of a code of ethics decreases the cost of equity by limiting managerial opportunism.

Design/methodology/approach-

In order to test the hypothesis, the authors perform an empirical analysis on a sample of US companies in the 2004–2012 period. The results are robust to a battery of robustness analyses that the authors performed in order to take care …

The Effect Of Professional Identity Salience And Leadership Climate On Accountants' Ethical Decisions, Yin Xu, Karl J. Wang, Doug Ziegenfuss

Accounting Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of contextual factors in organizations on accountants’ ethical decisions. Specifically, the study investigated whether professional identity salience and ethical leadership climate affected accountants’ ethical judgments and intentions to act more ethically. A study is conducted, in a 2 x 2 between-factorial design, by using certified public accountants (N=375) as participants. The findings show that accountants made more ethical judgments when professional identity salience was increased by highlighting the professional code of ethics. Accountants intended to act more ethically only when the leadership climate was positive. The results suggest that a …