ABSTRACT This study examines how the source and nature of reporting standards jointly influence compliance with those standards. More specifically, I examine how decision makers' identification with the source of the standards moderates compliance with different types of standards. Type refers to whether the accounting standard is descriptive or injunctive (i.e., prescriptive). Source refers to the entity promulgating the accounting standards. I conduct three experiments in which participants face a direct trade-off between reporting aggressively to maximize their personal wealth and reporting conservatively to adhere to a standard. I find that identification with the source causes less aggressive reporting for an injunctive standard, but when a standard is descriptive, identification has no effect or an opposite effect. When identification with the source is low, descriptive standards tend to work well compared to injunctive standards. With injunctive standards, persuasive factors, such as identification, likely influence financial managers' aggressive reporting behavior.

ABSTRACT Regulators and researchers provide evidence that auditors' judgment quality is problematic in complex audit tasks. We introduce a framework for improving auditor judgment in these tasks. The framework builds on dual‐process theory to recognize that high‐quality judgment in complex tasks requires that auditors (i) possess the knowledge needed for the task, (ii) recognize the need for analytical (versus heuristic) processing, and (iii) have sufficient cognitive capacity to complete the analytical processing. Based on the framework, we predict that auditors' need for cognition (NFC), a characteristic theoretically linked to recognizing the need for analytical processing, is associated with higher quality complex judgments. Analysis of 11 studies supports this assertion. We demonstrate the usefulness of the framework by predicting and finding that priming auditors with an accuracy goal improves judgments, particularly for lower NFC auditors, who are less likely to spontaneously engage in analytical processing. The framework facilitates systematic development of interventions to improve auditor judgment by highlighting that solutions should address the specific conditions causing judgment problems.