Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract Prior research demonstrates that audit professionals encounter client incivility. We extend this research by examining whether client incivility negatively impacts auditors' judgments and whether any adverse effects are reduced when auditors use coping strategies. We first collect descriptive survey evidence revealing that client incivility toward auditors is more widespread than currently documented. Next, using an experiment, we predict and find that auditors who experience client incivility (vs. those who do not) are less likely to challenge aggressive reporting if they are not prompted to cope. We also find that active coping reduces the adverse impact of client incivility, whereas findings for passive coping are inconclusive. Audit standards and users of financial statements expect auditors to fulfill their duty of maintaining a high level of professional skepticism irrespective of external circumstances. Our findings highlight the challenges auditors face in meeting these expectations when facing uncivil clients, thus posing a threat to audit quality.

Abstract One view of the socialization experienced by professionals in global Big 4 firms suggests that the intensity of socialization engenders a strong and deep‐rooted professional identity. We scrutinize this claim by drawing on interviews with partners who retired from lifelong employment in Big 4 firms in Japan. Through partners' reflections on their experiences in detaching from the firm, we examine how socialization manifests in partners' identity work. We find that partners' identity, which often appears entrenched, invariable, and heroic, can be highly fragile and vulnerable to changing circumstances. Before leaving the firm, interviewees attempt to reconcile their Big 4 “graduation” with feelings of obsolescence and a growing distance from previous accomplishments. After leaving the firm, interviewees revisit the identity built throughout their careers. Unable to move on to a selfhood detached from that identity, they refashion their identity relative to their former Big 4 partner self, backgrounding their private life and post‐firm professional affiliations. Not knowing how to “close the books,” retired partners seek comfort in the old “plot” and in the old “characters,” finding ways to “keep the books open” even after the “setting” has changed. Our results reconfirm the powerful socialization experienced by partners during their tenure with the Big 4 but run counter to scholarship that characterizes the identity of Big 4 partners as strong and fixed. Rather, we demonstrate the insecurity underlying our professional service heroes' identity work and the contingent identity work processes that partners engage in while navigating departure from the Big 4.

Abstract We interview public company tax executives to provide new evidence on how corporate taxpayers experience and navigate the income tax audit process. Interviewees describe being “targeted” by “tax police” and having to “defend” their positions. Thus, we adopt a structural metaphor of tax audits as police investigations and use a framework from the policing literature to explain what influences taxpayers' perceptions of fairness during audits. Perceptions of fairness are important as targets of investigations are more likely to cooperate and accept outcomes when they perceive policing processes as fair. Tax executives aim to obtain fair and consistent treatment by compiling documentation, consulting with peers and external advisors, and educating tax agents. Audits are adversarial, however, and taxpayers also act strategically to secure favorable outcomes and appeal or litigate when they believe outcomes are unfair. Interviewees note variation in the extent to which tax authorities create frameworks that facilitate fair audit processes and whether tax agents implement these frameworks. Our study offers new insights into the tax audit process from corporate taxpayers' perspectives. First, public company taxpayers view tax audits as redundant to financial statement audits of their tax positions. Thus, tax audits may have limited scope to deter tax noncompliance. Second, tax executives are not passive actors; they take deliberate actions to shape audit outcomes. Third, audits are less efficient for everyone when taxpayers perceive them as procedurally unfair. Investments by tax authorities that increase perceptions of fairness may enhance audit efficiency by increasing taxpayers' cooperation and acceptance of outcomes.

Abstract This study examines the informational role of local newspapers in institutional investments. Exploring local newspaper closures across US counties, we document that institutional investors significantly reduce their holdings in firms located near the closed newspapers. The post‐closure decrease in institutional holdings is concentrated for non‐local or non–hedge fund institutions. In contrast, institutions that are likely to possess information advantages—local institutions or hedge funds—do not decrease their holdings and may even increase them when faced with a lack of local news coverage. Further analysis reveals that local newspaper closures adversely impact institutional investors' ability to predict firms' stock returns, particularly for non‐local or non–hedge fund institutions. Collectively, we provide novel evidence suggesting that local newspapers are a key channel through which institutional investors acquire geographically scattered information.

Abstract The study develops theorizing of external organizational communications that entail impression management. This includes developing linkages to Goffman's work and a Goffmanian research tradition. Our approach innovatively articulates dimensions of impression management entailing the presentation of others and nuanced practices of what we term organizational altercasting (OAC). Altercasting has been conceptualized in a Goffmanian tradition. OAC, seen as implicated in more developed organizational impression management (OIM), involves an organization constructing for another/others (an audience with whom the organization interacts) a persona that is congruent with the organization's goals. Our theorizing also innovatively draws from Goffmanian insight in a coherently associated way—namely, by appreciating the pervasiveness of interaction rituals, including those that take place in an organizational communication style using today's technology. We suggest that OAC especially tends to entail tact. The empirical focus is a case analysis of a Polish bank (CB) facing challenges of cybersecurity and disclosing/communicating externally on cybersecurity/cyber‐risk. For insight, we address this question: In terms of a developed theorizing of OIM (including OAC), how did the bank respond to external challenges, related to cybersecurity, through public disclosures/communications? A content analysis of types of multimedia, with attention given to context, indicated the importance of the presentation of others. We were drawn to how CB's customers, a key audience, were presented in CB's external communications, highlighting long‐term engagement in, and an increase in the significance of, these communications. For our case, articulation of OIM and the presentation of others was further developed through OAC, with particular attention given to communication style vis‐à‐vis modern technology. Our work promotes OAC's wider applicability, including beyond cyber‐risk disclosures.

Abstract In contrast to prior research that typically focuses on the characteristics of the audit committee (AC), we investigate how intergroup differences between the AC and the rest of the board (ROB) affect monitoring effectiveness. Drawing on group literature and the similarity attraction paradigm, we hypothesize that high intergroup differences between the AC and the ROB impede communication and information sharing. Poor “fit” between the AC and the ROB can lead to an “us versus them” mentality that reduces trust and hinders knowledge exchange, diminishing monitoring effectiveness. Using a sample of listed US firms, we find that intergroup differences between the AC and the ROB in terms of their respective characteristics are linked to a lower likelihood of reporting an existing or likely material weakness, higher discretionary accruals, and a lower likelihood of a going‐concern opinion among financially distressed firms. These negative effects are most pronounced when the AC and the ROB are very different (i.e., in the upper quartile and decile of the AC‐ROB distance distribution). Additional analyses show a higher probability of a Big R restatement, a lower likelihood of a Big R restatement when a material misstatement likely exists, and a lower likelihood of goodwill impairment when one is expected. Notably, the adverse impact of AC‐ROB dissimilarity is more prominent when the AC is less powerful or lacks group stability. Regulators and companies should be aware that AC composition decisions cannot be made in isolation because large intergroup differences in director profiles between the AC and the ROB reduce monitoring effectiveness.

Abstract This paper examines how a low‐skilled, gendered occupational group collectively counters representations of its contribution to organizational performance. We situate this process within the literature on counter accounts—alternative representations designed to rectify perceived harms or injustices. Our study focuses on cashiers, referred to as “checkout hostesses” in their organization's gendered terminology, in the highly masculine building supplies sector. Drawing on a feminist theorization of counter accounts and a 1‐year ethnography at two levels (in a store and in a cashiers' working group), we show that cashiers produce three counter accounts: (1) a vocational qualification that highlights their accounting and selling skills, (2) a reframing of their customer credit activities as a contribution to sales, and (3) a quantification of their selling activity in a dashboard tracking sales at the checkout. These counter accounts challenge patriarchal social structures that frame their job as a low‐status “woman's job,” objectify them, and overshadow their contribution to organizational performance. We advance the concept of counter accounts from the inside, showing that they do not merely denounce oppression but also repurpose stereotypical gender and class norms as resources for collective empowerment. We also emphasize how internal organizational support fosters occupational groups' awareness of their agency. Finally, we argue that the potential and limitations of counter accounts must be assessed from the perspective of the vulnerable group itself, broadening their understanding as emancipatory tools produced for the “other” by the “other.”

Abstract The mandatory switch from the incurred loss model to the more forward‐looking current expected credit loss (CECL) model was originally scheduled to begin in 2020. However, when the COVID‐19 pandemic started in early 2020, US regulators made the switch voluntary. Our study investigates how banks' exposure to the pandemic affects their decision to adopt CECL as well as adopting banks' pandemic‐era pattern of loan loss provisions. First, consistent with pandemic‐driven economic uncertainty reducing banks' willingness to adopt the new model, we find a negative association between banks' pandemic exposure and their CECL adoption. This association is more pronounced for banks with more lending opportunities, more lending competition, and worse loan quality. Second, compared with non‐adopters, CECL adopters report more loan loss provisions during the pandemic's early period, and less or even negative loan loss provisions during the late period. The latter scenario reflects a reversal of earlier loan loss reserves and is more pronounced for banks with more exposure to states with a higher level of vaccination, consistent with banks having a more positive economic outlook because of improving pandemic conditions. Overall, our study offers useful insights into the adoption and implementation of accounting standards during periods of economic uncertainty.

Abstract In recent years, the Big 4 firms have embarked on digital transformation projects that have the potential to throw auditors' daily practice into turmoil. This study looks at the auditors' quest for professional security—namely, their confidence in the fundamental features of their profession. Specifically, we investigate how auditors, when construing their experiences in a firm engaged in a digital transformation project promoting automation of a significant portion of their work, seek to preserve their sense of professional security. Interviews with auditors indicate that, in contrast to the high professional insecurity caused by the commercialization of auditing in the early 2000s, the digital transformation of the profession ultimately strengthened auditors' professional security. Over time, the interviewees became receptive to the firm‐promoted label of tech‐savvy auditor and subscribed to the technological complementarity thesis, which sees closer “collaboration” with technology as enhancing the auditor's work rather than replacing, undermining, or enslaving the auditor. Three implications are discussed. First, our study casts doubt on auditors' romanticized view of the technological complementarity thesis in light of economic and socio‐organizational theories about the automation of work. These theories lead us to question the auditors' belief that they will retain their professional autonomy. Second, according to our analyses, one key explanation for auditors' high level of professional security is that digital transformation projects surrounding the audit function are part of a continuing and reassuring trajectory of commercialization within accountancy. Third, our findings suggest that digital transformation projects act as vehicles for identity development, allowing the tech‐savvy auditor to escape the shameful stereotypes ascribed to the traditional auditor—that is, an auditor who manually performs most of the mundane tasks required to complete an audit.

Abstract We examine how common institutional investors (CIIs) facilitate the financial reporting comparability (FRC) of US firms. Common ownership increases FRC of firms that are directly owned by CIIs (via a direct effect) and has positive spillover effects on other firms in the same industry. We find spillover effects in two types of firms: (1) those that are commonly owned by different institutional investors but are connected through common firms, and (2) those that do not have any common ownership. These results suggest that the effect of common ownership goes beyond commonly owned firms and extends to non‐commonly owned firms. Furthermore, we find two mechanisms for the direct and spillover effects of common ownership on reporting comparability: firms' hiring of common auditors and their adoption of similar accounting practices. Overall, we provide comprehensive evidence on how common institutional ownership benefits the comparability of financial reporting in the United States.