On Friday 16 December from 15.30 - 16.30 hrs, FAR will organize a FAR Young Auditing Academic Brown Bag Seminar with Sander Tiggelaar (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen).

He will present his paper Management control in auditing firms and its implications for managing coexisting objectives from research project 2020B02 (15-20 minutes). This research paper will then be discussed by Ioan Gheorghe Ivanescu of the University of Amsterdam (10 minutes). The session will end with an extensive Q&A part (35 minutes). 

This paper examines the effect of the management control system on the management of the professional and commercial objectives that coexist in auditing firms. The aim is to extend knowledge of management control in auditing firms by examining not only results-based control but also other controls and the dynamics between different control elements. Studying these dynamics contributes to auditing research and provides important insights for auditing practice. The analysis builds on an in-depth case study in the Dutch branch of a large auditing firm. In this firm, semi-structured interviews are conducted, based on an interview guide which draws on both management control and auditing literature and includes questions regarding auditing firm goals, the use of different management control mechanisms, where tensions between different objectives arise and how these affect auditors’ day-to-day work, and how these tensions are influenced by the management control system. The findings show that the different elements within auditing firms’ management control systems together create a dynamic system that is able to pull in both professional and commercial directions. Compensating, reinforcing and enabling relations are found to be important in optimally designing management control systems in auditing firms. Furthermore, it is found that the management control system is not fixed but changes in response to the priorities associated with a particular phase of an audit.

The seminar is by invitation only, junior faculty and young academics can reach out to FAR to apply for an invitation (info@foundationforauditingresearch.org).