FAR Working Paper 2024/05 - 26: Silence is not Golden: How Team Consensus and Inclusive Climate Affects Junior Auditors’ Conformity Behavior and Risk Assessment Sharing
Key Take-Aways
- In hierarchical teams, the importance of encouraging individuals to share information is crucial (in particular when authenticity is emphasized)
- Solely encouraging juniors to show their true self may not always result in desired effects (more conformity, less info sharing)
- Audit firms can cultivate a climate of belongingness, rather than authenticity, via team-building initiatives, regular one-on-one social engagements between junior and senior members, fostering a sense of connection, support, and psychological safety
Authors
Eddy Cardinaels (1975) is full Professor of accounting at Tilburg University and part-time professor at KU Leuven. His work combines new insights from psychology and behavioral economics to study how different information presentation (ABC, BSC, summaries of earnings releases) can affect decision making of managers within companies. Other experimental work focuses on drivers of honest reporting and social motives in inter-firm negotiations. He also conducts archival work on corporate governance examining how social connections between board members affect financial reporting, how companies use their networks to engage in tax avoidance and factors that drive (excess) compensation.
Evelien Reusen obtained her PhD at KU Leuven and is currently Associate Professor in Management Accounting at RSM. Evelien’s research concentrates on the role of control, cooperation and trust, in both intra- and interorganizational settings.
Her work has been published in Accounting, Organizations, and Society and The Journal of Supply Chain Management.
Professor in Accounting and Control at Vlerick Business School and KU Leuven.