Abstract Using data collected from 21 interviews with audit committee members (ACMs) of Canadian reporting issuers, this study examines the ways in which ACMs understand and enact the additional responsibilities placed on them by regulators in the post–Sarbanes‐Oxley Act era. Adopting a social constructivist approach to knowledge and expertise, the study shows that despite the financial literacy requirements for ACMs, financial expertise is far from being uniformly understood by ACMs. Indeed, ACMs perceive expertise in many different ways, which leads them to engage in a wide variety of practices to fulfill their responsibilities on audit committees (ACs). The analysis of the data makes it possible to identify three oversight styles— observing , inspecting , and storytelling —that illustrate the differences in how ACMs understand their role, prepare for AC meetings, invest time in this preparation, and develop lines of questioning. These findings provide empirical insights into both the substantive and symbolic roles of ACs and illustrate the role of knowledge and ignorance in shaping ACMs' understanding of their oversight role. This study also raises questions about the soundness of having ACs oversee multiple different processes. By highlighting that ACMs do not comprehend and enact their role uniformly, this study reveals the important nuances in ACMs' oversight approaches.

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine auditors' claims of professional disempowerment and strategic responses to Canadian Public Accountability Board (CPAB) inspections. Our research is based primarily on 27 semistructured interviews with audit partners (23) and managers (4) of large accounting firms. Drawing on key insights from institutional theory, we show that the tensions between inspectors and auditors reflect an intraprofessional tug‐of‐war between two competing but legitimate logics of professionalism. More specifically, our findings indicate that CPAB inspections have given rise to a mechanical logic of audit professionalism that is driven by the efforts of inspectors to promote a generalizable theoretical ideal of auditing that revolves around best practices and attention to technical minutiae. This mechanical logic competes with a clinical logic of audit professionalism that is driven by the efforts of audit partners and managers to promote a more relativistic, applied form of expert knowledge. To manage this dynamic of intra‐institutional complexity, quality experts (QEs) have emerged in firms' organizational structures as ambidextrous third parties—that is, professionals who master both logics and are capable of bridging the institutional divide by influencing the relationships between inspectors and auditors through a variety of brokering strategies. By considering inspectors as insiders rather than outsiders to the profession, we argue that auditors' claims of professional disempowerment should be interpreted carefully and critically. We also suggest that the professional autonomy and judgment of engagement partners and managers has been displaced significantly within firm boundaries into the hands of QEs. Our analysis offers a richer conceptualization of institutional ambidexterity by examining it as a relational process of social influence rather than as a set of individual characteristics.

ABSTRACT Accounting firms have traditionally operated as both elite and reinventive institutions that offer a structured and prestigious career path and enforce a deeply transformative socialization process for auditors. However, recent labor market shifts and evolving work preferences are challenging this regime of power, with significant implications for firms and their employees. Drawing on 31 semistructured interviews with auditors in Canada, our study examines how these changes are reshaping power dynamics within accounting firms. First, we find that firms are increasingly struggling to define and produce the ideal auditor. Instead, as we highlight, they are experiencing the emergence of the default auditor , a professional shaped more by labor market constraints and transactional engagement than by traditional firm‐driven selection and disciplinary mechanisms. Second, we analyze the erosion of pastoral power (i.e., power rooted in guidance and care) within firms, as staff auditors prioritize the care of the self, while partners and managers (P&Ms) increasingly struggle to establish and sustain pastoral relationships with their subordinates. As a result of this erosion, P&Ms fluctuate between self‐sacrifice (i.e., taking on additional responsibilities to compensate for auditors' disengagement) and a growing sense of inequity (i.e., feeling they are giving too much while receiving too little in return). To capture this growing impasse, we develop the concept of disciplinary and pastoral paralysis , a state in which P&Ms can no longer rely on traditional mechanisms of discipline and punishment to enforce norms of professional conduct but also struggle to reinvent new forms of pastoral power. We examine the implications of this loss of control, questioning whether it represents a temporary shift or a more permanent transformation. Finally, we discuss the broader consequences of accounting firms becoming less like normalizing institutions and more like “ normal ” organizations.