Abstract:*

IT specialists in public accounting firms can serve in dual roles as both auditors and consultants, potentially creating tensions that affect their professional judgments. We investigate whether the way specialists think about these dual roles impacts how they respond to management persuasion attempts when evaluating internal control deficiencies. In an experiment with experienced IT specialists, we manipulate role integration (more versus less integrated) and management persuasion attempts (present versus absent), while we measure perceived role conflict. Drawing on role theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we predict and find that the effect of role integration on IT specialists’ susceptibility to management persuasion attempts is stronger when role conflict is higher. Specifically, we find that when IT specialists perceive higher role conflict, those with less integrated roles are more susceptible to management persuasion attempts and provide lower severity assessments when persuasion is present versus absent, while those with more integrated roles are not swayed by persuasion attempts and consistently provide higher severity assessments. We also find no differences across role integration and persuasion attempt conditions when IT specialists perceive lower role conflict. Our study advances understanding of how specialists’ roles within accounting firms affect their professional judgment when working on audits, offering implications for firms and regulators concerned with ensuring that audit teams make appropriate judgments and are not swayed by client preferences or persuasion attempts.

*Co-authored with P. Csere (University of Waterloo) and C. Estep (Emory University)

General information:

Attendance to this seminar is possible by invitation only. Please send an e-mail to secbs-abs@uva.nl if your are interested in attending this seminar.