Ruiqiong (Cara) Zhang is a PhD candidate in Accounting at Tilburg University, where she is part of the Department of Accountancy at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management. She holds a Research Master’s degree in Business Administration and Organizational Science from Maastricht University and a Bachelor’s degree in Financial Management and English from Tianjin Foreign Studies University. Her research focuses on workload allocation within audit firms, examining how lead auditors—those responsible for managing engagement teams and signing audit reports—are assigned to clients. This work explores the determinants and consequences of allocation decisions and their implications for audit quality and auditor career development.
Cara has contributed to projects investigating gender differences in workload allocation and their impact on audit quality, using large-scale empirical data and interviews with audit practitioners. Her findings provide insights into human resource management strategies in audit firms and inform best practices for improving audit quality. She teaches courses in management accounting and actively participates in research seminars and collaborative projects aimed at bridging academic research and auditing practice.