Jere Francis

Function Role

Professor Jere Francis is ranked among the top ten academics to publish in leading scientific journals in the field of accountancy research.He won two awards from the American Accounting Association (AAA) for his substantial contribution to auditing research. He was also named Outstanding Audit Educator in 2013 by the AAA. Professor Francis served on the editorial boards of several leading scientific journals, including Abacus, Accounting Organizations & Society, Accounting & Finance, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting & Economics, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review. In addition to being of scientific import, his research has been of practical significance to accountants and regulatory authorities and he has presented his research to leading international accountancy firms, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the World Bank and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the United States. As FAR Research Chair, Professor Francis conducts scientific research on the quality of audits. He will also boost auditing education in the Netherlands with the help of several PhD students as part of this chair position.

Audit Partner-Manager Dyadic Fit and Audit Team Functioning
This paper investigates the formation of audit partner-manager pairings (dyads) and the consequences of this formation on the functioning of the engagement team. Prior literature mainly focuses on the role of one leader alone, while in practice, an audit team is usually led by two key figures. This dual-leadership structure and its potential effect on the team are largely unexplored. We draw on the theory of homophily to develop predictions, and test them using data from 221 engagement teams and their leaders. The analyses suggest that partners and managers that form a dyad are more similar in terms of their skills and leadership behavior than other random matches based on the available pool of auditors. However, the similarity is not necessarily beneficial for the functioning of the engagement team. Only when the partner and manager are both highly skilled and demonstrate strong leadership does the similarity result in a better functioning team. Otherwise, a complementary match is associated with better team dynamics. The findings on the role of partner-manager dyads in guiding an engagement team can inform audit firms on how to better compose and manage their audit teams.  
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Partner-Manager Voice Modeling Behavior, and the Effects of Mixed Messages on Audit Teams
Team science research in the organizational behavior (OB) literature shows that successful teams must elicit “voice” from its members, i.e., the willingness to speak up and share information with the team. We propose a framework that recognizes when leaders exhibit their own “voice” behaviors, it creates psychological safety for the team – i.e., it allows team members to feel safe and encouraged to speak up about important audit matters. Analysis of data from 127 audit engagement teams with 754 auditors indicates the following. First, there is a positive and dominant effect on an audit team’s psychological safety (and ultimately on team voice climate and team performance) when managers engage in voice role modeling behavior. However, when the manager is also seen to engage in negative counterproductive behaviors, such as taking “short cuts” during the audit, the positive effects of his / her voice modeling behaviors are lost. This finding shows the importance of avoiding “mixed messages” from the manager, as this leads audit team members to question whether it is safe to speak up. Second, our findings reveal that when the partner and manger differ in emphasizing voice behaviors (one high, one low), these mixed (inconsistent) messages did not diminish perceived team psychological safety. Thus, if at least one leader (either the partner or the manager) is enacting high levels of voice role modeling behavior, the team still has high psychological safety and team voice climate. The results emphasize the need for leadership training to help partners and managers demonstrate, through their own “voice” leadership behaviors, that there is an environment of psychological safety that enables voice for the audit team. However inconsistent signals from team leaders can potentially compromise the team’s sense of psychological safety.
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Does Personality Relate to Job Performance of Audit Partners and Managers?
We investigate if personality traits are associated with the skills and job performance of experienced auditors. Based on survey and internal audit firm data from 1,600 Dutch auditors from the Big 4 and six mid-sized audit firms, we first provide descriptive evidence of significant variation in auditors’ personality traits. Personality traits vary between Big 4 and non-Big 4 auditors, and auditors become increasingly homogenous in higher function levels. Next, we find that personality traits predict distinct skills (commercial, technical, and leadership) that are part of the auditor’s job. The tension that exists between the commercial and technical aspects of the audit is also reflected in opposing personality profiles that are beneficial for each of the skills. Finally, audit firm assessments of job performance are associated with personality, both directly, and indirectly through their effect on skills. Collectively, these results contribute to our limited understanding of personal characteristics and auditor performance.  
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When Dual Team Leaders Model Voice Behavior: Boundary Effects of Involvement, Mixed Messages, and Stifling Hierarchy on Team Safety, Voice Climate, and Performance
Key Take-Aways What leaders can do to help team members feel safe enough to create a climate of voice in a dual-leader
  1. The manager plays a key role in the team: voice-modeling behavior from the manager has a stronger association than the partner’s behavior. Need for leadership training to help managers demonstrate, through their own “voice” leadership behaviors, that there is an environment of psychological safety that enables voice for the audit team.
  2. Managers’ influence is accentuated when they are more involved and avoid mixed messaging (by not engaging in counterproductive RAQ acts).
  3. Partner’s voice role modeling may help in absence of the manager, but otherwise has a stifling effect (less actual team voice). More manager involvement cannot compensate for this.
The manager is the “team climate engineer” for the audit team.  
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Understanding Audit Firm Culture through the Lens of the Competing Values Framework
KEY TAKE-AWAYS Audit firm culture is viewed by regulators and inspectors as the means to enhance audit quality. This study uses the Competing Values Framework (CVF) to explore the culture of large audit firms, and their attempts to change their cultures. We find that these firms predominantly emphasize a culture characterized by collaboration and control, which is consistent with an inward focus. We also find that audit firms struggle to implement a consistent understanding of culture across their offices and function levels, and there is a gap in how partners perceive culture compared to that of non-partner staff. This “culture gap” has negative consequences on auditors, as larger culture gaps are associated with lower psychological safety and poorer person organization fit. Embedding mechanisms can lower the culture gap, but having adequate resources is far more important of an embedding mechanism than “tone at the top.” The findings underscore the importance of actively communicating and reinforcing stated cultural values, and provide audit firms with a practical tool to diagnose problems in achieving culture change.  
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It Takes Two to Make a Team Go Right
Today’s teams often have two formal leaders (i.e., dual leaders), yet research has almost exclusively examined the effects of a single, higher-level team leader’s behaviors on team members and team outcomes. This is problematic because these findings cannot unequivocally be applied to guide the use of dual-leader team structures. Using 93 professional service (i.e., audit) action teams, we examine effects of partner (i.e., external) and manager (i.e., internal) leaders simultaneously exhibiting initiating structure and individualized consideration leadership behaviors on team efficacy and, ultimately, team performance and team viability. Our findings show that the total capacity of leadership effects for a team with two leaders is only captured after considering the influence from both leaders simultaneously, especially when examining interactive effects between an individual leader’s behaviors and across two leaders’ behaviors. We find team efficacy is strengthened when the partner alone exhibits both higher structure and consideration, which is further augmented when the manager also exhibits higher consideration simultaneously. Thus, we find dual-leader interactions demonstrating the “Power of the Partner” and “Power of Consideration” effects are critical for building team efficacy, and in turn, team performance and team viability in dual-leader structures, revealing the existence of meaningful leadership interactions that cannot be found in single-leader studies.  
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