The auditor‐to‐client revolving door: A structured literature review

Abstract

This study analyzes the underexplored research area of audit revolving door (ARD).The analytical framework categorized the reviewed articles by author and article information, citation, research theme, motivational event, jurisdiction, nature of research, regional focus, organizational focus, research method, data analysis, literature focus, and findings. Our analysis highlights that no particular aspect can be held true or generalized about the ARD phenomenon. The ARD literature is USA dominated, organizationally based, and focused on post-departure issues, employing a quantitative approach with obvious lack of perceptions of stakeholders. We call for more qualitative research that critiques pre-and post-ARD, addressing the "how"and "why" questions, soliciting perceptions of various stakeholders. To frame directions for future research, we refer to three areas: threats, benefits, and safeguards of ARD. Our findings are relevant to research students reviewing the auditing literature to find their own research and to academic auditing researchers looking for appropriate research outlets. KEYWORDS audit firm alumni/affiliation, Audit revolving door, employment of ex-auditor, former auditor, structured literature review generally do not support concerns of significantly impaired auditor independence in these hiring situations. This inconclusive evidence applies to similar issues of ARD impact in relation to audit quality, effectiveness of the coolingoff period, reporting quality, and possible benefits resulting from ARD. This perhaps results in one conclusion: the ARD phenomenon remains an area ripe for further research. With this in mind, we believed that a literature review of the existing ARD research would be a crucial starting step in this regard because it would set the status quo of ARD from the perspective of past research, portray the focus of existing major ARD research themes, and identify the gaps for future research directions. Accordingly, this paper aims to review and critique the existing ARD research, thus suggesting ways forward for future ARD research. KOTB ET AL. 465

Mapping of internal audit research: a post-Enron structured literature review

“…We adopted the criteria most widely used in prior accounting reviews (e.g. Guthrie et al, 2012;Brown and Jones, 2015;Kotb et al, 2018). To test the suitability of the adopted criteria, the three authors independently coded a randomly selected sample of 35 papers.…”

“…-3 - Journal type 1 auditing journal 2 non-auditing journal Kotb et al (2018) Journal location 1 US journal 2 non-US journal Brown and Jones (2015) A c c o u n t i n g , A u d i t i n g a n d A c c o u n t a b i l i t y J o u r n a l -4 - a The actual total number of journals, research papers and papers should be larger by one. The total is less by one paper published in a mixed nationality (US and Non-US) journal (i.e.…”

Determinants of auditor choice: Review of the empirical literature

“…Lai et al (2017) argued that firms with higher gender diversity are likely to demand higher audit quality and recruit industry-specialist auditors. 9 Also see a meta-analysis by Kotb, Halabi, and Elbardan (2018) on the implications of affiliation of firm executives and directors with audit firms.…”

“…Also see a meta‐analysis by Kotb, Halabi, and Elbardan () on the implications of affiliation of firm executives and directors with audit firms.…”

Corporate reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals: a structured literature review and research agenda

“…Consistent with prior SLRs, we employed Google Scholar citations to determine the impact of the 65 articles (Dumay et al, 2016;Kotb et al, 2018Kotb et al, , 2020. Data were obtained from Google Scholar on the number of citations for each article as of 11 March 2023.…”