How Accounting Professionals Cope with Client-Initiated Workplace Aggression

Abstract

Accounting professionals experience client-initiated workplace aggression, and prior research suggests the mechanisms used to cope with workplace aggression can influence the extent to which such aggression detrimentally affects work quality. We survey 163 accounting professionals to examine the mechanisms accountants use to cope with client-initiated workplace aggression. We focus on three types of coping mechanisms grounded in psychology theory – active, passive, and retaliatory – and we examine how frequently each are used. We also examine how these coping mechanisms are associated with different types of client aggression and accountant ranks, and with self-perceptions of work quality. Encouragingly, and different than findings in broader workplace coping research, our results show that accounting professionals most often try to take action to address the situation, but they also commonly passively cope by ignoring or resigning themselves to the status-quo. Given the importance of interaction in an accountant-client context, coping passively can have a significant negative influence on work quality. Interestingly, accountants tend to cope more passively (and less actively) as they experience more work-related negative acts. Further, we find that partners generally cope differently than staff, seniors, or managers and certain coping mechanisms appear better-suited to avoid adverse effects of client-initiated aggression (e.g., active - talking to the perpetrator) than others (e.g., passive - just accepting the situation). Avenues for future research are discussed.