The overall aim of this proposal is to assess how virtual engagement teams can deliver high-quality audits virtually.

The first study investigates how an organizational context in which auditor-artificial intelligence interactions are prevalent affects auditors’ cognitive processing and subsequently the degree of professional skepticism exercised by auditors.

This study explores junior auditors’ tendency to imitate senior auditors’ auditing practices styles and, additionally, how the firm’s promotion pressures may affect audit quality through such mimicking behavior.

This study focuses on a firm’s potential improvement of professional skepticism in the interplay between an auditor’s innate professional skepticism (personality trait), audit firm culture and audit quality by addressing three questions:

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.

Identify the conditions where under audit firms can most effectively leverage on Multiple Team Memberships (specific to the firms’ business model) and team members to most effectively cope with the demands of fluid team membership in securing both high quality audits, a motivated workforce, and appropriate team culture.

The research objective is to understand the primary factors that make audit partners, management and their engagement teams successful in terms of the quality of their teamwork and engagement outcomes.