No abstract

In response to a variety of challenges, accounting firms are reorganizing and reengineering their core audit services to capitalize on technology advances and to deliver more value-added services to their clients. Critics, however, have voiced concern that the changes underway undermine auditors' professionalism. Accordingly, this study examines auditors' sense of professional identity. Specifically, we provide (1) a comprehensive model of the relation between auditors' professional and organizational identities, including their potential conflict; and (2) the antecedents and consequences of auditors' professional and organizational identification, including how organizational-professional conflict relates to turnover. We find relatively high levels of professional identification and organizational identification, and a relatively low level of organizational-professional conflict among our study's 252 Big 5 auditors. Professional identification is positively related to organizational identification, but it is organizational identification and its antecedents that play the central role in the empirical model. Organizational identification decreases both organizational-professional conflict and turnover. The results have implications for both practitioners and researchers.

No abstract

This study empirically models auditors' relationships with their clients. The Independence Standards Board (ISB 2000) identified auditors' familiarity with the client as one of five threats to auditor independence. Yet familiarity with the client is necessary for auditors to understand the client well enough to plan and perform an effective and efficient audit. We introduce a theory-based measure of the extent to which auditors identify with a client, which we then use to directly measure auditors' attachment to the client and the threat of this attachment to auditors' objectivity. The responses of 252 practicing auditors support our theoretical predictions. Specifically, we find that auditors do identify with their clients and that auditors who identify more with a client are more likely to acquiesce to the client-preferred position. On the other hand, more experienced auditors and auditors who exhibit higher levels of professional identification are less likely to acquiesce to the client's position.