Eric R. Condie, Ling Lei Lisic, Timothy A. Seidel, Jonathan Michael Truelson, Aleksandra B. Zimmerman
{"title":"Does gender and ethnic diversity among audit partners influence office-level audit personnel retention and audit quality?","authors":"Eric R. Condie, Ling Lei Lisic, Timothy A. Seidel, Jonathan Michael Truelson, Aleksandra B. Zimmerman","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.12882","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Motivated by prior literature on organizational identification and 23 semistructured interviews with a variety of US audit partners and directors, we examine whether the gender and ethnic diversity of an office's audit partners influences the retention of the office's audit professionals and the quality of the audits conducted by the office. Using hand-collected data on US audit partners, we find that greater levels of (or changes in) diversity in office audit partners' gender and ethnicity are associated with lower (reduced) turnover among office audit professionals and higher (increased) office-level audit quality. We conduct a path analysis based on the most common mechanisms highlighted in our interviews to provide further insight into the audit quality results. The results indicate partial mediation through increased retention, greater gender and ethnic diversity among office audit personnel, client continuity, and increased efficiency. Further tests reveal that the association with audit quality is incremental to, and distinct from, the effect of individual engagement partner characteristics and does not reflect client screening. The findings underscore the importance of gender and ethnic diversity among office audit partners to organizational outcomes and provide important practical implications for audit firms.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Contemporary Accounting Research","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1911-3846.12882","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Motivated by prior literature on organizational identification and 23 semistructured interviews with a variety of US audit partners and directors, we examine whether the gender and ethnic diversity of an office's audit partners influences the retention of the office's audit professionals and the quality of the audits conducted by the office. Using hand-collected data on US audit partners, we find that greater levels of (or changes in) diversity in office audit partners' gender and ethnicity are associated with lower (reduced) turnover among office audit professionals and higher (increased) office-level audit quality. We conduct a path analysis based on the most common mechanisms highlighted in our interviews to provide further insight into the audit quality results. The results indicate partial mediation through increased retention, greater gender and ethnic diversity among office audit personnel, client continuity, and increased efficiency. Further tests reveal that the association with audit quality is incremental to, and distinct from, the effect of individual engagement partner characteristics and does not reflect client screening. The findings underscore the importance of gender and ethnic diversity among office audit partners to organizational outcomes and provide important practical implications for audit firms.
期刊介绍:
Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR) is the premiere research journal of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association, which publishes leading- edge research that contributes to our understanding of all aspects of accounting"s role within organizations, markets or society. Canadian based, increasingly global in scope, CAR seeks to reflect the geographical and intellectual diversity in accounting research. To accomplish this, CAR will continue to publish in its traditional areas of excellence, while seeking to more fully represent other research streams in its pages, so as to continue and expand its tradition of excellence.