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Setting audit fees is a persistent source of stress for auditors who must, on one hand, comply with the increasing government regulations that generally cause costs to rise; and on the other hand, respond to client pressures to keep audit fees down. In the post-scandal environment of Enron, WorldCom, and the demise of Arthur Andersen, policy makers have introduced additional costs for auditors by increasing regulations and creating a new industry watchdog – the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). In this environment of constant pricing-cost tension for the auditor, the purpose of this paper is to examine audit fee trends over an extended period, 2000-2014.

The authors calculate the unexpected audit fees using the audit fee model. The authors examine audit fee trends while controlling for changes due to inflation, auditor wages, and other audit fee determinants.

The key findings indicate that audit fees increased in response to the promulgation of new audit regulations requiring additional audit work, the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 and Auditing Standard No. 2 in 2004. Additionally, the authors find that audit fees decreased after new regulations alleviating audit work, namely the passage of Auditing Standard No. 5 in 2007, and remained unchanged when new regulations had a minimal impact on audit work, namely the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010.

The findings of this research are relevant to audit clients, auditors, and regulators as they weigh the cost and benefits of significant new audit regulations and their impacts on audit fees.

Using the more recent US data, the results in this paper show how events changed audit fee trends in recent years. The findings indicate that audit fees increased after the passage of new audit regulations such as the SOX Act of 2002, Auditing Standards No. 2 in 2004, and decreased after the passage of Auditing Standards No. 5 in 2007.

This paper revisits the Reynolds and Francis’ (2001) study via the use of a more current dataset, incorporation of improvements into the accrual model and the use of actual fee data vs estimates. Using the improved analyses, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether more conservative auditors’ reports on larger clients are still evident.

The paper follows Reynolds and Francis (2001) in using a regression model with White-adjusted t-statistics for the discretionary accrual model and a logistic model for going concern analysis. The most current discretionary accrual model is used to improve the original model, use actual fee data (not available previously), and add analyses using the two components of total fees (i.e. audit and non-audit fees).

As opposed to Reynolds and Francis (2001), the results show that the Big Five auditors are less conservative with higher-paying clients as they allow their clients to have more discretionary accruals. While Reynolds and Francis (2001) found that auditors are more likely to report going concern opinions for higher-paying clients, the results in this paper does not show any difference in the propensity of auditors to issue going concern opinions.

This study replicates Reynolds and Francis (2001) using more recent US data, applying the most recent discretionary accrual model, using the actual fee data, and adding analyses using total fees decomposition.

The purpose of this paper is to replicate Richardson et al.’s (2005) study on how accrual components’ reliability affects earnings persistence and whether investors anticipate the lower earnings persistence through stock return. In this study, the authors use more recent data to examine whether the previous results still hold.

The authors run the analysis using Richardson et al.’s (2005) design of ordinary least squares and report the results using Fama and Macbeth’s (1973) procedures.

The results corroborate Richardson et al.’s (2005) conclusions that lower reliability of total accrual (accrual components) leads to lower earnings persistence.

This study replicates Richardson et al. (2005) using more recent US data. The results in this paper confirm the general conclusion in the original study: less reliable accruals lead to lower earnings persistence.

This paper aims to examine whether Andersen’s audit quality in the five years preceding its collapse lagged that of other Big-Five auditors.

This paper compares Andersen’s audit quality and the other Big-Five auditors using five methodologies, namely, earnings response coefficients, magnitudes of abnormal accruals, propensities to issue going-concern opinions, usefulness of going-concern opinions in predicting bankruptcy and the frequency of Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases. The comparisons are based on both pooled samples of all observations and propensity-score-based matched-pairs.

The preponderance of evidence shows that Andersen’s audit quality did not differ materially in audit quality from other Big-Five auditors prior to its failure. However, it was found that Andersen’s independence was compromised in the year leading to its collapse (2000), as indicated by the lower likelihood to issue going-concern opinions.

This paper complements and improves on Cahan et al. (2011) by using more measures of audit quality, as no one measure is perfect, showing that their results using discretionary accruals are sensitive to the model used and showing that there is a more powerful direct measure of audit quality, namely, going-concern opinions.

Brand online social networking (BOSN) is a novel marketing phenomenon in which companies initiate and cultivate relationships with their customers through online social networking (OSN) sites. Because of its openness to the public, BOSN is distinct from a traditional brand community. This study aims to explore patterns and schemes of individuals’ BOSN based on the sociological schemas noted in Goffman’s dramaturgical approach.

This study adopts in-depth personal interviews to uncover the full meaning of BOSN. A total of 21 Facebook brand page participants were interviewed, and the interviews were recorded digitally and transcribed verbatim, providing data for analysis. Triangulation was accomplished through examination of informants’ Facebook webpages that presented their own postings. The transcribed data were interpreted using a hermeneutic approach.

The data analysis based on the dramaturgical lens reveals four key themes: diversity in consumers’ intentionality toward BOSN social connections, their feeling of contamination of the digital self and a desire for autonomy, consumers’ roles as the actors and audiences on a brand’s BOSN stage and backstage experience and consumers’ feeling of intimacy. Findings highlight how individuals’ perceptions of audiences and the social media platform as a stage influence their performance in BOSN conjointly. These findings reveal that individuals participate in BOSN as a means of augmenting their identity.

Findings from this study advance the extant literature addressing online brand communities by exploring a novel form of brand assemblages within the context of social media. Employing a dramaturgical approach, this study identifies the distinct nature of the consumer–brand relationship in the virtual agora of OSN, which is hyperindividualistic in nature and is used to augment a sense of self.

Misbehavior is ubiquitous. Its occurrence stretches back in time and shows little sign of abating. According to Richards (2008, pp. 653–654), organizational misbehavior “has been a prominent feature of organizational studies throughout the twentieth century and continues to command similar attention in the first decade of the twenty-first century.” Early interest has been traced back to F. W. Taylor's criticisms of workers’ restriction of output (Taylor, 2003) in the first two decades of the twentieth century, a phenomenon also considered by Donald Roy (1952, 1959) after World War Two, and subsequently extended by Jason Ditton (1977) and Gerald Mars (1982) to include workplace crimes such as “fiddles and theft.” In more recent times, such fiddles have been extended to the study of “cyberslacking” (Block, 2001), “cyberloafing” (Lim, 2002), and general workplace internet misuse (Lara, Tacoronte, Ding, & Ting, 2006). Yet, despite such interest in “organizational misbehavior,” the scholarship in this field is relatively recent and generally traced back to the work of Vardi and Wiener (1996) and Ackroyd and Thompson (1999).

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether one Recovery College reflects its community.

Recovery College students’ demographics and protected characteristics were compared with the general population and the population of people using local mental health services.

Recovery College students were representative of the local community in terms of ethnicity, religion or belief and sexual orientation. Fewer Recovery College students were over 60 years old or men.

Recovery Colleges may be more accessible to people who are often under-served and under-represented in mainstream mental health services, including people from BAME backgrounds and people who identify as LGBT. Recovery Colleges may need to engage more men and more older people. Recovery Colleges aim to be inclusive and open to all but need to ensure that this is a reality in practice.

This is the first study to explore who accesses Recovery Colleges and whether they are inclusive and open to all.

In Scotland, individuals referred for NHS psychological therapies are expected to commence “treatment” within 18 weeks of receipt of referral. With high demand, high non-attendance rates and limited capacity, this can be a challenging goal. The service discussed here was keen to develop a way of seeing individuals referred sooner and improving the efficiency of the assessment process. The purpose of this paper is to look at the impact of introducing assessment (“Signpost”) appointments on waiting times, attendance, and treatment planning.

Signpost appointments were offered to all existing, and any new referrals, to an adult psychological therapies team (PTT) in NHS Lanarkshire. Clinicians kept a record of the outcomes of these appointments over a six month period. Waiting times and attendance figures were compared before and after the introduction of the Signpost system.

Following the introduction of Signpost appointments, individuals were seen sooner for both assessment and therapy. Attendance at first appointments improved and Signpost appointments helped inform treatment planning. Although alternatives were discussed, the majority of clients were still offered individual therapy. Service user and staff satisfaction was high.

The results from this study led to assessment (“Signpost”) appointments being rolled out across other adult PTTs in NHS Lanarkshire.

There is little research looking at the impact of assessment/signpost appointments on adult mental health services in the UK. In the current climate of public service cuts, this study provides an innovative way of reducing waiting times and maintaining service user satisfaction, without requiring more resources.