This paper examines how the treatment of audit staff who discover errors in audit files by superiors affects their willingness to report these errors. The way staff are treated by superiors is labelled as the audit office error management climate. In a “blame-oriented” climate errors are not tolerated and those committing errors are punished. In contrast, an “open” climate characterizes error commitment as a normal, albeit unfortunate aspect of organizational life that offers opportunities for learning without sanctions on the originator. We examine error management climate in the context of audit-specific factors that might affect the decision to report errors: audit error type (conceptual or mechanical) and who committed the error (the individual who discovered it or a peer). An open climate results in an increase in the reporting of mechanical (but not conceptual) errors and all peer errors versus a blame climate. Post hoc findings suggest that one obstacle to reporting conceptual errors stems from an auditor's own impression management concerns. We discuss how auditing standards and regulatory inspections may impact audit firm error management climates. Data Availability: Experimental data are available from the second author subject to data confidentiality restrictions issued by the participating firms.

This article presents a study on the leadership climate and the use of accounting data in performance evaluation in the U.S. An evidence allowed the initial distinctions which were made among the three styles of using accounting data in performance evaluation to be placed in a wider managerial perspective. For the final impact of an accounting system on managerial behavior has been shown to depend on its interaction with the forms of social and self-controls which are reflected within the various leadership climates and the personal motives and defenses which they activate.

This is a study of perceived role conflict and role ambiguity by audit seniors in a large public accounting firm. Drawing on role theory, a model was developed to act as a framework to analyse both the potential consequences and source of role conflict and ambiguity. Hypothesized relationships were tested by the use of Pearson product-moment correlations and multiple regression. Both role conflict and ambiguity were found to be significantly related to several adverse consequences. Significant relationships were also found between role conflict and ambiguity and specific measures of the organizational climate of the CPA firm which were hypothesized to be potential sources of role stress.