Jan Bouwens

Professor

Jan Bouwens is a Full Professor of Accounting at the University of Amsterdam and a Research Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School. His research focuses on performance measurement systems, target setting, and internal controls, examining how these mechanisms influence decision-making within firms and audit practices. He has published extensively in top-tier journals, including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Management Science, and Accounting, Organizations and Society.Jan earned his PhD in Accountancy from Tilburg University and has held academic positions at Tilburg University, Cambridge Judge Business School, and Harvard Business School, where he taught in the MBA program. He currently serves as Head of the Accounting Department at the University of Amsterdam and until December 2025 Academic Director of the Foundation for Auditing Research (FAR). He has advised the Dutch Parliament, Ministry of Finance, and the Dutch Authority for Financial Markets on topics related to education, compensation, and auditing.

Performance Measurement, Career Development, and Compensation for Audit Partners
This study examines how Dutch audit firms changed their policies for audit partner performance measurement, career development, and compensation during a period of heightened public scrutiny (2007–2017), and whether those changes translated into day‑to‑day practices. Using proprietary policy documents and partner‑level performance and compensation data from the eight largest audit firms in the Netherlands, the authors find that audit quality became more consequential for promotions, demotions, and job retention, while profit sharing shifted toward longer‑term performance and was complemented by penalties (and claw‑backs) for low quality. Overall, firms appear responsive to public scrutiny, aligning partner incentives more closely with societal expectations of audit quality.
Read PDF
More Info
Moving the audit profession forward – New research and best practices (MAB Issue)
Based on the 3rd International FAR Conference (2018), this special issue of Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie (MAB) highlights key insights from the event. The conference, held in June 2018 at Nyenrode Business University, focused on the theme: “Moving the Audit Profession Forward – New Research and Best Practices.” This publication brings together the most important presentations and discussions, offering readers a comprehensive overview of the ideas and developments shared during the conference.  
Read PDF
More Info
Do Assigned Audit Partners Perform Higher Quality Audits Than Self-Selected Auditors?
Auditors are selected and paid for by the organizations they audit. Policymakers are concerned that this structure influences auditor independence which, in turn, impairs quality. Accordingly, policymakers consider whether audit quality is enhanced if the auditor is appointed by an external (independent) party. The authors study the working of such a model in a natural setting for local subsidiary audits conducted by the big-4 as part of group audits, where the local auditor is either assigned to the subsidiary through parent firm management or self-selected by the subsidiary. The authors find that audit partners assigned to subsidiaries receive less information from the auditee, issue fewer going concern opinions, identify fewer control deficiencies, identify and correct fewer misstatements, and are less likely to constrain earnings management compared to self-selected auditors. Some further preliminary evidence the authors collect suggests that assigned auditors produce lower audit quality through effort reduction.
Read PDF
More Info
← PreviousPage 2 of 2Next →
February 9, 2026

FAR sponsored study published in The Accounting Review

A FAR sponsored study by Olof Bik, Jan Bouwens, Robert Knechel and Yuxia Zou has been accepted for publication in The Accounting Review. This study examines how audit firms changed their policies on audit partner performance measurement, career development, and compensation during a period of heightened public scrutiny of audit quality (2007–2017). It argues that implementing policy changes requires a delicate transition in organizational design and internal processes of firms and that the changes may not automatically translate into day-to-day practices. Access to proprietary performance management policies and individual partner performance and compensation data from the eight largest Dutch audit firms enables an in-depth analysis of the evolution of audit partner performance management. The findings indicate that most policy changes have tangible consequences. In particular, audit quality becomes more influential in career development decisions, while profit sharing is increasingly linked to quality and long-term performance. Overall, the evidence suggests that audit firms respond effectively to public scrutiny by increasingly aligning partner incentives with societal expectations regarding audit quality.
Externalpublications.aaahq.org
No related events.

Filter projects: 

Project Lead
University Filter
1 - 10 of 52 projects