Fear and risk in the audit process

Guénin-Paracini, Henri; Malsch, Bertrand; Paillé, Anne Marché

doi:10.1016/j.aos.2014.02.001

Cited by 158 publications

(143 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…If our intuition makes sense, then the psychodynamic approach -elaborating on how our 'personal anxieties, fears and yearnings can be seen to underpin some of the routines and rituals of work organizations', or to put it another way, how 'our deepest existential fears are camouflaged by the very act of working and organizing' (Fineman, 1993, p. 2) -arguably provides a promising path to better understand the profound psychological roots and practical effects of the contemporary risk management apparatus and its underlying system of thought. Drawing on this approach (for a summary see Guénin-Paracini, Malsch, & Marché Paillé, 2014) may enable researchers to complement the social constructionist perspective that we adopted in this paper to understand risk management.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Construction of Risk Management Credibility Within Corporate Boardrooms

Gendron¹,

Brivot²,

Guénin-Paracini³

2015

European Accounting Review

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Despite various corporate collapses over the last decades, risk management is increasingly influential across organizations worldwide, as if the apparatus' credibility was impermeable to scandals that, from critical angles, cast doubt on its efficacy. Relying on a cultural perspective of analysis highlighting the range of social processes that protect prevailing institutions' legitimacy from aberrations, we examined the sense-making approaches employed by corporate boardroom actors to maintain their confidence in the credibility of the risk management apparatus despite being exposed to a continuous flow of corporate failures pointing to risk management efficacy limitations. Specifically, we conducted 35 interviews with corporate board stakeholders, mostly board members and corporate consultants. Our analysis indicates that actors involved in risk management processes tend to interpret aberration cases through perspectives that put the blame on some implementation deficiency, thereby ensuring that risk management's core assumptions are not questioned. These perspectives point to a defensive system of thought grounded in the director and consultancy communities, whose main referents are subject to intense work and re-conceptualization in the aftermath of aberrations, thereby providing community members with the means to make sense of the frictions of organizational life in ways that maintain the legitimacy of the risk management apparatus.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Construction of Risk Management Credibility Within Corporate Boardrooms

Gendron¹,

Brivot²,

Guénin-Paracini³

2015

European Accounting Review

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“…Notes 1. Dashtipour (2014) and Guénin-Paracini et al (2014) are, to our knowledge, the only publications that draw on Dejours in the English language organization and management studies. 2.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work as affective experience: The contribution of Christophe Dejours’ ‘psychodynamics of work’

Dashtipour

Vidaillet

2017

Organization

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Psychoanalytic perspectives (such as the Kleinian/Bionian and Lacanian literature) have made significant contributions to the study of affect in organizations. While some have pointed out the affects involved in work tasks, most of this literature generally focuses on the affects linked to organizational life (such as learning, leadership, motivation, power, or change). The center of attention is not on affects associated with the work process itself. We draw from the French psychodynamic theory of Christophe Dejours-who is yet to be known in English language organization studies-to make the following contributions. First, we show the relationship between affect and working by discussing Dejours' notions of affective suffering, the real of work, the significance of the body, and 'ordinary sublimation'. Second, we advance critical research in organization studies by demonstrating the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject. Third, the article reinterprets Menzies' well-known hospital case study to illustrate how Dejours' theory extends existing psychoanalytical approaches, and especially to point to the significant role of the work collective in supporting workers to work well. We conclude by suggesting that if the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject is acknowledged, it follows that resistance strategies, and work collectives' struggle for emancipation, should focus on reclaiming work.

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“…Instead, in the presence of shareholders, management's performance could become a source of embarrassment (Goffman ) to the auditor, which brings us to this study's second contribution which further discusses the emotional aspects of auditing (Guénin‐Paracini et al. ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…This endpoint, the signed report, has been described as a state of comfort for the individual auditor (Pentland ; Carrington and Catasús ; Guénin‐Paracini et al. ) arrived at through interactions with management and the audit committee (Pentland ; Power ; Gendron and Bédard ; McCracken et al. ; Guénin‐Paracini et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Auditor Face‐Work at the Annual General Meeting

Johed¹,

Catasús²

2018

Contemporary Accting Res

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This paper examines how auditors prepare for the annual general meeting (AGM) and how they report their work to the shareholders there. Prior literature has suggested—but not explicitly studied—that the endpoint of an audit is a state of comfort between the auditor and the management and audit committee members, but also is potentially fragile. The fragility can arise from a failure to relay trust to the investor community, which may initiate or increase doubts about the financial report and/or the auditor's independence. We build the case that an AGM is an event to study how the endpoint of an audit engagement is both a state of collective comfort and a fragile state. The analysis is based on ten interviews and three workshops with auditors as well as observations at 67 AGMs. To analyze the field material, the paper draws on Goffman's idea of face‐work, which requires backstage preparations, notably with management, and a front stage performance as an independent auditor to relay trust to the shareholders. The paper details how auditors at the AGM perform as independent verifiers of the management's financial report. Although we recorded that auditors were typically successful in preventing the backstage activities from becoming visible to the shareholders, we found incidents that challenged both the auditors' and the managements' face. In analyzing these incidents, we found that auditors reinforced their image as independent to regain both their own face and the management's face. The management did not take a similar collective responsibility for the auditor's face, which implies that auditors were asymmetrically committed to the management. As a take‐away, the paper discusses how governance mechanisms backstage are linked and can surface front stage at the AGM.

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Fear and risk in the audit process

Cited by 158 publications

References 76 publications

The Construction of Risk Management Credibility Within Corporate Boardrooms

The Construction of Risk Management Credibility Within Corporate Boardrooms

Work as affective experience: The contribution of Christophe Dejours’ ‘psychodynamics of work’

Auditor Face‐Work at the Annual General Meeting

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