Mary B. Curtis and Eileen Z. Taylor
This study aims to examine how public accounting firms can use developmental mentoring to increase knowledge sharing (KS) among employees directly and indirectly through affective…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine how public accounting firms can use developmental mentoring to increase knowledge sharing (KS) among employees directly and indirectly through affective organizational commitment.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a survey of public accounting professionals to elicit participants’ demographics and their perceptions of KS, mentoring relationships and organizational commitment in their workplace.
Findings
The findings support that two categories of challenges found in developmental mentoring, demonstrating dedication and resilience and career goal and risk orientation, are directly associated with increased KS and they, along with a third, measuring up to mentor’s standards, indirectly influence KS through their positive effect on organizational commitment. Applying social exchange theory, these challenges contribute to a reciprocal relationship between the protégé and mentor, which builds the relationship between the protégé and organization.
Practical implications
This study provides information about developmental mentoring that human resource professionals and managers in public accounting firms can use to address two persistent challenges facing them: increasing employees’ organizational commitment and encouraging employees to share their knowledge with others at work.
Originality/value
This study examines the concept of developmental mentoring, adopting three categories of mentoring challenges and applying them in the context of public accounting to examine their effect on KS.
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Megan Seymore, Neil Wilner and Mary B. Curtis
Outside influences affect the progression of research in any discipline, including accounting. These influences offer one explanation for problems of replicability or…
Abstract
Outside influences affect the progression of research in any discipline, including accounting. These influences offer one explanation for problems of replicability or comparability to previous studies, a common concern today. This article examines “who” participates in behavioral experiments and surveys involving accountants. This issue is important because of nontrivial differences in the composition of those in the accounting profession (and thus, participants in subject pools) over approximately 50 years of behavioral accounting research. Based on the theory of individual differences, we explore whether differences in the population of accounting research participants through the years could impact the replication or comparability of current-day research to earlier studies.
Our reading of available literature suggests that our profession has become more diverse in terms of gender and country of origin and that the oft-referenced characteristics of the millennial generation may also represent a distinct difference from previous generations of accountants. We discuss instances in which this changing nature of our profession, and thus our research population, could have implications for current-day behavioral accounting research.
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Alexandra L. Ferrentino, Meghan L. Maliga, Richard A. Bernardi and Susan M. Bosco
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in…
Abstract
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.
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Mary B. Curtis and Elizabeth A. Payne
The authors aim to examine whether the well-established unified theory of acceptance and use of technology can be effectively adapted for use in an external audit setting and…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors aim to examine whether the well-established unified theory of acceptance and use of technology can be effectively adapted for use in an external audit setting and whether the re-specified model holds under different levels of budget pressure.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper takes the form of a case study/questionnaire with Lisrel path modelling.
Findings
Results support the re-specified model.
Research limitations/implications
The model should aid audit research by providing a platform for new research to explore more specific solutions to technology reluctance. The authors extend general TAM research through additional exploration of the theory and impact of social influence, a determinant that has shown inconsistent tendencies in prior studies. The authors address several limitations in past TAM research including the use of student participants and self-selection bias.
Practical implications
Firms must understand the implications of their policies and culture on the intention of audit teams to voluntarily utilize software. Technology can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of audit procedures, aid in the identification of fraud and lower litigation costs. Accounting firms have invested in the development of audit testing software and can only recoup these investments if the software is used.
Originality/value
The study is the first to completely model the intention to use technology in an external audit engagement with consideration of budget influences.
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Mary B. Curtis and John M. Williams
Prior research suggests both formal and informal norms influence employee behavior. While increased training is a typical recommendation to strengthen formal norms by increasing…
Abstract
Prior research suggests both formal and informal norms influence employee behavior. While increased training is a typical recommendation to strengthen formal norms by increasing adherence to organizational codes of conduct, and therefore improve ethical behavior, there is little empirical evidence that code training actually strengthens formal norms or improves ethics-related behavior. Conversely, prior observations of unethical behavior serve as strong indicators of informal norms. These observations may be unknown to management and therefore difficult to moderate using other means, including with training on a code.
We test the impact of prior observations of unethical behavior and training for a code of conduct on intentions to report unethical behavior in the future, as well as possible mediators of these relationships. We find some support that training on the code increases intention to report and strong support for the notion that prior observations of unethical behavior decrease intentions to report. Responsibility to report and norms against whistle-blowing both mediate the prior observation-to-reporting intentions relationship, but not the training-to-reporting intentions relationship. An interesting by-product of training seems to be that, by increasing awareness of unethical behavior, and therefore the salience of prior observation, training may have indirectly influenced intentions in the opposite direction intended.
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Megan Seymore and Mary B. Curtis
Some of the best information for preventing accounting violations is received from employees who have observed the unethical behavior (Henning, 2016). However, receiving…
Abstract
Some of the best information for preventing accounting violations is received from employees who have observed the unethical behavior (Henning, 2016). However, receiving information about accounting violations or other unethical behavior in organizations requires employees to voluntarily report the behavior. Employees may be particularly hesitant to report unethical behavior when the behavior benefits them. Employees may also justify their own unethical behavior as morally appropriate when their moral identity allows the behavior. The authors draw on psychology and ethics literature to examine the relationships among moral identity, moral disengagement, and unethical behavior. In the exploration of behavior, the authors examine both commissions and omissions. While unethical commissions are violations directly committed by an individual without cooperation from others, unethical omissions are violations resulting from an individual failing to take steps necessary to correct another's unethical behavior.
The authors conduct a survey about cheating with a sample of college students. Using structural equation modeling, the authors find that intentions to engage in unethical commissions are positively associated with moral disengagement, while unethical omissions do not appear to create the moral disengagement that can arise from cognitive dissonance. The authors also find a feedback loop from moral disengagement to future intentions, which suggests moral disengagement created from one unethical act increases intentions for future unethical behavior. Finally, the authors find a simple intervention that can help to increase the moral intensity of observed unethical behavior.