Starting Your Career at an Accounting Firm: The Role of Personality in Explaining Career Starts

Abstract

This study investigates whether personality affect graduate business students’ decisions to start their career in the accounting profession, and at a Big 4 accounting firm. We analyze survey data from 348 graduate students. Results show that students with lower levels of openness to experience are more likely to seek careers in accounting. Further, results show that students with higher levels of narcissism are more likely to start their careers in a Big 4 firm. Additionally, we show that this effect of narcissism is fully mediated by students' attitudes towards the Big 4. Compared to students who seek careers at non-Big 4 firms, Big 4 career seekers believe that the Big 4 offer higher salaries, better opportunities for training, experience, and networking, more advancement opportunities, better career prospects, more interesting, challenging, and fulfilling work, more friendly colleagues, a better relationship with supervisors, more job security, and higher prestige.

Partner narcissism in a private market setting: Consequences for audit reporting decisions and audit pricing

“…Therefore, future research could focus on the relationship between audit partner narcissism and the demand for auditing. Fifth, prior research in accounting suggests that hiring a more narcissistic individual can lead to adverse outcomes such as counterproductive work behaviours (Kerckhofs et al, 2021) and audit delay (Church et al, 2020). However, the results of the current study suggest that narcissism may also be associated with more positive outcomes.…”

“…This requirement also allows us to investigate the entire Belgian audit market (unlike many other settings where information is only available for listed firms). Fourth, prior research suggests that narcissism affects career decisions (e.g., starting at a Big 4 firm) in the Belgian accounting profession (Kerckhofs et al, 2021). Therefore, we further investigate its role in other decisions in the context of public accounting.…”

“…Within the accounting literature, a large body of research already exists on the role of chief financial officer (CFO) and chief executive officer (CEO) narcissism and its influence on financial outcomes (e.g., Capalbo et al, 2018;Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007;Ham et al, 2017Ham et al, , 2018Ingersoll et al, 2019;Judd et al, 2017;Olsen & Stekelberg, 2016). However, much less research has focused on narcissism in auditing (e.g., Chou et al, 2021;Church et al, 2020;Kerckhofs et al, 2021Kerckhofs et al, , 2023Takada et al, 2021). A recent study by Chou et al (2021) (CPZ) is the only one to date that has empirically examined the effect of audit partner narcissism on audit reporting decisions.…”

“…The Belgian audit market has a predominant private client segment (Gaeremynck & Willekens, 2003; Hardies et al, 2018; Vanstraelen, 2003) and has disclosed the name and signature of the engagement partner since 2007. Further, prior research suggests that narcissism affects career outcomes (e.g., the decision to start at a Big 4 firm and partner aspirations) in the Belgian accounting profession (Kerckhofs et al, 2021, 2023). By partially replicating the study by CPZ, our study provides evidence for the empirical generalizability of the association between partner narcissism and audit reporting decisions and audit pricing.…”