2020B04 - Audit firm culture, audit quality and other organizational outcomes (Prof. dr. Francis)

What?

This new proposal is a logical extension of the first Audit Research Chair project, and will use the same research team.
The study builds on the first project by examining the potential effect of an audit firm’s organizational culture on individual auditor attitudes and behavior, audit team performance and audit quality, and other organizational outcomes such as employee job satisfaction/turnover and operating performance. In the initial FAR project, audit partners/mangers and their engagement teams are analyzed “as if” they are autonomous units. While the results of this research will be very informative, we also know that audit teams actually work within the larger context of an audit firm’s organizational structure and context, and react to the specific effects of a firm’s internal culture. Thus, the goal of the second FAR Chair proposal, is to extend the analysis of partners/managers and their audit teams, by measuring and assessing the effect of organizational culture on their behavior in order to better understand why these things happen.

Why?

Given the critical importance of culture in facilitating high-quality audits, the contribution of this FAR research proposal is to scientifically examine the current state of organizational culture in audit firms, and to demonstrate whether a firm’s culture is a key driver of measurable organizational outcomes, including audit quality and individual and team indices of employee attitudes, behaviors, and effectiveness.