Dr. Katlijn Haesebrouck

Associate Professor

Katlijn Haesebrouck is Associate Professor of Accounting at Maastricht University. She earned her PhD from KU Leuven and specializes in managerial accounting and control, with a focus on behavioral approaches and experimental research. Her work examines how management control systems influence organizational behavior, particularly knowledge sharing, incentive design, and misreporting. Katlijn has published in leading journals such as The Accounting Review, Accounting, Organizations and Society, and Contemporary Accounting Research. She is actively involved in projects on culture controls in audit firms funded by the Foundation for Auditing Research. In addition to research, she teaches managerial accounting and information management courses and supervises BSc, MSc, and PhD students.

The effects of information acquisition effort, psychological ownership, and reporting context on opportunistic managerial reporting
This study examines how the effort managers expend to acquire information influences their reporting behavior. Greater effort can create psychological ownership, which may lead to two opposing effects: a sense of deservingness that increases opportunistic reporting, or a sense of responsibility that reduces it. Using a budget reporting experiment, the author manipulates (1) whether managers earn information through effort or receive it effortlessly, and (2) the salience of honesty in the reporting context (framed as a business vs. ethical dilemma).
Results show that when honesty is less salient, managers who earn information report more opportunistically (add more slack) than those who are endowed with information. However, when honesty is emphasized, this effect is mitigated. A supplemental experiment confirms that psychological ownership and its impact on reporting can also be induced through subtle cues like personalized messaging. The findings suggest that reducing information acquisition effort or increasing honesty salience (e.g., through ethical framing or codes of conduct) can help curb opportunistic reporting.
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Cultivating Auditors Who Are More Committed to and Better at Ensuring Audit Quality
Using a multi-method approach, we first introduce the construct of well-calibrated professional skepticism and identify how it facilitates auditors’ response to heightened risk of material misstatement without also raising costly false alarms. We then draw on the management and management accounting literatures to identify several audit firm “soft” culture controls and auditor-specific characteristics that we predict, and find evidence consistent with being, antecedents of well-calibrated professional skepticism. We position well-calibrated professional skepticism as an internalized value and connect it to the psychology literature on calibration. We discuss how audit firms can improve the portion of their audit professionals who are well-calibrated professional skeptics by improved selection during recruitment of human talent and by investment in culture controls that credibly reveal a commitment to “walking the talk” when it comes to audit quality.
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The Effect of Audit Culture on Audit Quality
In this research note, we discuss why designing a management control system that directs effort towards audit quality is so tricky. We discuss the different ways that audit firms motivate effort and highlight “culture controls” where, through selection and socialization, audit firms create a workforce of auditors that value and, therefore, work hard to ensure audit quality. We also discuss the importance of directing auditors’ efforts towards audit quality and distinguish three critical elements. Auditors must: (1) understand the importance of audit quality, (2) possess the right tools and capabilities, and (3) prefer those tasks that lead to audit quality. We share some preliminary results of our research that examines how successful five Dutch audit firms are at this non-trivial task. This provides firms with the knowledge to critically examine and improve their own current management control system. Our study is relevant for Dutch audit firms as well as for auditors all over the world.
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Well‑calibrated professional skepticism: how culture and auditor values drive better audit judgments
This study introduces the concept of well-calibrated professional skepticism, auditors’ ability to respond critically when misstatement risk is high without overreacting when risk is low. Using interviews, experiments, and surveys with 399 auditors, the research shows that well-calibrated skeptics make better judgments and plan appropriate actions, improving audit quality.
Auditor pride, however, does not significantly influence judgment. Key drivers of calibrated skepticism include supportive leadership, sufficient resources, and personal values such as truth-seeking and contributing to society.
The findings suggest that audit firms can strengthen skepticism through cultural controls and by hiring auditors who value integrity and societal impact.
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The Effect of Audit Culture on Audit Quality
In 2014, the professional body for accountants in the Netherlands (NBA) indicated that audit quality did not live up to the public’s expectations. One of the main corrective measures suggested by the NBA was an improvement in audit culture (NBA, 2014). Although audit culture can be an important determinant of audit quality, the extant academic literature has not payed much attention to audit culture. This paper provides an overview of the literature on audit quality and audit culture as a determinant of audit quality
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