On Wednesday October 8, 2025, FAR PhD student Iver Wiertz successfully defended his dissertation ‘Teamwork transformed: exploring information sharing, team virtuality, and hierarchy in the audit profession’ at Maastricht University.
The Foundation for Auditing Research congratulates Iver with this great achievement!
The dissertation examines the factors shaping modern teamwork in the audit profession. It offers actionable insights to help organizations unlock their teams’ full potential by addressing the challenges of information sharing, virtual collaboration, and hierarchy.
Beyond its academic contributions, the dissertation offers valuable practical recommendations on how organizations can deal with fundamental teamwork challenges:
- When teams operate in an uncertain, dynamic, and uncertain environment, companies should prioritize creating psychologically safe environments and cultures that encourage information sharing for all ranks in the team.
- To overcome the challenges associated with virtual teamwork, organizations should minimize team virtuality when collaborating in a virtual manner by emphasizing information-rich means of communication (like video conferencing).
- In addition, when engaged in virtual teamwork, leadership should engage in empowering leadership behaviors as this helps overcome the negative influence of virtual teamwork.
The research also has broader implications beyond the audit profession. Many of the findings are relevant to other industries where teamwork is crucial, such as consulting, healthcare, finance, and IT. By applying the insights from this dissertation, organizations across different sectors can overcome challenges fundamental to teamwork