​This thesis studies the interplay among management control mechanisms and the effect of their joint use on how professional and commercial objectives are managed in auditing firms.

This study investigates the way audit firms in the Netherlands use culture controls, the extent to which these culture controls result in employees internalizing the organizational objective of high audit quality, and the factors that influence this relationship.

This study will (provide a diagnostic tool to) investigate the appropriate conditions audit firms may want to consider to strengthen their (audit team’s) learning from error climate (i.e., the organizational context wherein audit team effectively learn from errors) to strengthen the interplay between individual auditors’ characteristics and the firm’s organizational environment in order to strengthen audit judgment quality.

Understanding the drivers of potential talent loss across experience years and its consequences in terms of audit quality – in order for the firms to be better able to retain talent over the years (and thus better capitalize on their investment in learning and development).