Knowledge that Transforms

We show that financial reporting influences consumer behavior by drawing consumer attention to announcing firms. Analyzing global positioning system (GPS) data, we document upticks in foot traffic to firms’ commercial locations immediately following their earnings announcements. This increase is more pronounced for announcements with substantial media attention, fewer concurrent announcements, heightened internet search volume, and extreme stock price jumps and earnings surprises—indicating that announcement coverage impacts consumer behavior by capturing attention. Furthermore, foot traffic increases with positive earnings for firms offering durable goods, suggesting consumers respond to news about firms’ financial prospects. Consumer attention patterns increase revenues and advertising effectiveness, ultimately suggesting that financial reporting serves a marketing function. Data Availability: All other data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

We use large, detailed data on individual auditor employment to examine the antecedents of turnover decisions and subsequent career paths of diverse individuals in public accounting—namely women and racial/ethnic minority groups (Asian, Black, and Hispanic). Despite investments in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruiting by firms, we observe a higher likelihood of turnover among diverse auditors. Consistent with the principle of homophily, we find that same-group representation is crucial in retaining diverse auditors. These individuals are less likely to leave when surrounded by peers and leaders of the same group and are more likely to join an organization with greater same-group representation. We also find that most individuals leave the audit profession, but those who stay longer have higher seniority later in their careers—suggesting that extended tenure could mutually benefit firms and individuals. Our findings offer valuable insight for firms seeking to promote DEI while improving retention rates.

The impacts of technological change and automation are now being explored in audit, yet parallel studies of tax practitioners are more limited in scope. It cannot be assumed that the two practice areas will follow similar paths. The present study reports the results of a multimethod qualitative study of tax lawyers and accountants that suggests that tax work is more resistant to technology than auditing. Although automation is enthusiastically embraced in the area of tax compliance, this is not the case for tax advisory work. We explain this by reference to the commitment to craftsmanship that prevails in tax advisory work. Craftsmanship is important in understanding how experts respond to technological encroachment, and we suggest it has wider applicability to the study of financial occupations.

Whether audit firms should disclose financial statements is controversial among investors, practitioners, and regulators. The debate centers on whether audit firms’ financial statements provide information about audit quality. Using hand-collected data from U.K. audit firms’ financial statements, we construct four measures that capture audit firms’ resource investments (i.e., human capital, workplace environment, technologies) and risk exposures (i.e., litigation provisions). We find that increases in audit firms’ staff costs, investments in tangible assets and IT software, and reductions in litigation provisions are associated with improved audit quality. The information in audit firms’ financial statements is not contained in their transparency reports or regulatory inspection reports. Additional tests show that increases in audit firms’ staff costs and tangible assets, as well as reductions in litigation provisions, are associated with improved audit efficiency.

Prior research finds that audit offices lose market share after they are involved in alleged audit failures. We examine whether such reputation effects are driven by private communications from rival auditors. We determine which offices are likely to be well informed about alleged audit failures by identifying the incoming office of the client accused of misreporting and by identifying law firm connections between each audit firm and the plaintiffs and defendants in each lawsuit. Consistent with private communications being a driver of auditor reputation effects, we find that tainted offices lose significantly more market share to rival offices that are likely to be informed about the alleged audit failure.

This paper studies whether and how firms’ enhanced public disclosures of patent filings can spill over to the managerial labor market. Consistent with these disclosures crowding out the demand for directors and senior managers’ (DSMs) private information, I find that their external employment opportunities deteriorate when firms disclose patent information more timely. This effect is more pronounced when the strategic value of the disclosed information is higher and when DSMs face fewer barriers to sharing information. Additionally, the decline in their human capital value is reflected in a diminished role in transferring timely information about technological innovations. Collectively, these results shed light on how public disclosures can shape the managerial labor market by substituting private information flows between firms through DSM ties. Data Availability: The data used in this study are available from the sources indicated herein.

We examine whether the media can act as a friction that hampers the efficiency of corporate labor investment, a decision that attracts significant media attention. We develop a new measure of media exposure that takes into account the circulation and geographic proximity of a comprehensive set of media outlets. We show media exposure leads to greater labor investment inefficiency. Closer examination reveals that media exposure is associated with firms underhiring, but not underfiring. This underinvestment in labor by managers helps avoid future layoffs but is inefficient in that firms are left understaffed relative to their economic fundamentals. Further, we find that managers’ concerns about their personal reputation, but not the firm’s reputation, primarily drive our results. Our findings illustrate that the media can serve as a friction for, in addition to being a facilitator or monitor of, corporate labor investment decisions. Data Availability: All data are available from public sources identified in the paper.

Regulators and academics have long explored the implications of audit market competition on audit pricing and quality, primarily focusing on large audit firms. Despite a presumption of competition among smaller accounting firms, little evidence exists regarding whether and how competition influences audit pricing and quality among them. Additionally, within this market, prior research typically considers competition only from audit offices already serving public-company clients. This study uses a unique database with office-level data for all audit firms in the U.S., regardless of whether they audit public companies, to examine the role of potential entrants. Examining both incumbent threats (offices without public clients but affiliated with a firm serving public clients) and external threats (offices of PCAOB-registered audit firms with no public clients) as sources of competition, the findings suggest that potential entrants are associated with improvements in audit quality and reductions in audit fees for clients of triennially inspected auditors. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources identified in the paper.

ASC 842 requires firms to collect and analyze lease contracts for accounting classification, measurement, and recognition purposes. Leveraging the implementation of ASC 842, I examine firms’ internal accounting hiring and its impact on the efficiency of lease management. I find that the standard prompts lease-intensive firms to significantly increase their internal accounting hiring, which enhances lease-related financial reporting quality. Moreover, firms that increased accounting hiring achieve greater efficiency in managing leases than those that implemented the standard without such hiring. This efficiency gain is incremental to improvements from concurrent information system upgrades and is more pronounced in firms with greater cost-saving opportunities and those that hire more experienced accountants. These results highlight that the benefits of internal accounting hiring extend beyond financial reporting, improving firms’ operational decisions.

Organizational structure information is deeply embedded in the different functional activities of accounting. This paper presents ORSO (ORganizational Structure Ontology), an ontology for describing organizational structures that can be reasoned with as part of accounting applications, developed following the principles and guidelines of design science research. ORSO allows the representation of key organizational constructs to meet internal and external accounting needs, including financial reporting requirements, analysis of an organization’s governance structure, economic analysis of agent and group performance, the definition and monitoring of controls, and responding to political and social inquiries about agents and other needs. A prototype is presented that demonstrates three possible types of applications of ORSO systems: (1) analysis of organizational structures, (2) accounting analysis through the integrated use of Resource-Event-Agent (REA) transaction data and ORSO specifications, and (3) constraint definition and monitoring. Data Availability: Additional information is available from the authors.