In this study, we use a survey instrument to obtain perspectives from almost 800 auditors about present-day audit workloads and the relationship between audit workloads and audit quality. Our findings indicate that auditors are working, on average, five hours per week above the threshold at which they believe audit quality begins to deteriorate and often 20 hours above this threshold at the peak of busy season. Survey respondents perceive deadlines and staffing shortages as two of the primary reasons for high workloads and further believe that high workloads result in decreased audit quality via compromised audit procedures (including taking shortcuts), impaired audit judgment (including reduced professional skepticism), and difficulty retaining staff with appropriate knowledge and skills. We also find that auditors’ job satisfaction and their views on the audit profession are impacted negatively by audit workloads, particularly when the workloads are perceived as being heavy enough to impair audit quality. Overall, our findings provide support for the PCAOB’s concern regarding excessive workloads and suggest that the primary drivers of workloads (i.e., deadlines and staffing problems) might be the actual “root cause” of workload-related audit deficiencies.

Article Citation:

Julie S. Persellin, Jaime J. Schmidt, Scott Vandervelde, and Michael S. Wilkins. 2016. Auditor Perceptions of Audit Workloads, Audit Quality, and the Auditing Profession. Working Paper, available for download at SSRN here.

Gaps in international law have resulted in transnational corporations bearing little or no direct responsibilities for their actions in host countries (De Brabandere, 2010; Slawotsky, 2012). The void in international regulation of corporate behavior cedes the area to the host country itself or to non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”). The intent of this paper is not to provide an examination of international law as it pertains to transnational business entities (Ratner, 2001; Bantekas, 2004; Mushkat, 2010; Alvarez, 2011, Stewart, 2013), or even to examine the role of the NGO in providing oversight (Adeyeye, 2010, Backer, 2010), as both have been examined extensively. Rather, this paper takes a multi-disciplinary approach to examine the unique characteristics of one of the most prominent NGOs, the UN Global Compact (UNGC), to provide insight into ways in which organizational identity theory and salience might enable it to develop its strengths and overcome its weaknesses in providing the oversight and accountability that international law cannot currently provide.

Article Citation:

Katherine Lopez, Julie S. Persellin, and Linda Specht. 2014. Can the UN Global Compact Fill the Gap in International Corporate Law? Southern Journal of Business and Ethics, Vol. 6, pp. 130-140.

Corporate accounting failures and regulatory proceedings that led to the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 increased the scrutiny of auditors. We investigate whether these events resulted in a change in auditor behavior with respect to going concern reporting. Generally speaking, we find that smaller auditors became more conservative while Big 4 auditors became more accurate. Specifically, smaller auditors issued more going concern opinions to both failing and non-failing clients post-2001, reducing their Type II misclassifications at the expense of increased Type I misclassifications. However, Big 4 auditors decreased their Type I misclassifications with no corresponding increase in Type II misclassifications. Thus, our findings suggest that increased auditor scrutiny resulted in performance improvements in the area of going concern reporting primarily for larger auditors. For smaller auditors, improved going concern accuracy for subsequently bankrupt clients came at the cost of more going concern opinions being issued to subsequently non-failing clients.

Article Citation:

Linda Myers, Jaime Schmidt, and Michael S. Wilkins. 2014. An Investigation of Recent Changes in Going Concern Reporting Decisions Among Big N and Non-Big N Auditors. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Vol. 43 (1), pp 155-172.

Notions of the "fairness" of tax laws are usually based upon wherewithal to pay, with a tax judged as "fair" if the taxpayer is able to pay it. This paper takes an alternate approach, examining the ethical implications of a "True Flat Tax", a "Modified Flat Tax", and a proposed "Fair Tax" from the perspectives of two ethical frameworks: utilitarianism (i.e., the fairness of the outcome of the tax) and deontology (i.e., the fairness of the intent of the tax). While the results of the deontology analysis indicate that all three models have ethical worth based on their intention to simplify compliance and create a fair system; and the results of the utilitarian analysis indicate all three models have desirable consequences that include reduction of complexity, compliance costs, and collection costs, the analysis must also consider the utilitarian philosophy that seeks the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Only the Modified Flat Tax proposal has the potential to affect all taxpayers equally after consideration of proportionate sacrifice and marginal utility.

Article Citation:

Katherine Lopez and Linda Specht. 2013. The Taxman Cometh - Will He Be Fair? A Comparative Ethical Analysis of Proposed Tax Reforms. Southern Journal of Business and Ethics, Vol. 5.

This paper experimentally examines whether the likelihood of a Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) audit engagement inspection can moderate the negative incentives created by short-term stock option compensation on audit committee members' decisions. Prior research suggests that short-term option compensation may weaken audit committee member objectivity and oversight quality (Archambeault et al. 2008; Magilke et al. 2009; Keune and Johnstone 2010); however, holding individuals accountable for their actions has been shown to result in less self-serving decisions (Rus et al. 2012). Ninety-two Executive M.B.A.s, serving the role of audit committee members, evaluate a hypothetical audit case that involves a dispute between management and the external auditors, with likelihood of PCAOB inspection and type of compensation manipulated between participants. Results confirm prior research on option compensation, finding that participants show less support for recording a proposed income-reducing audit adjustment when compensated primarily with short-term options rather than cash. In addition, a significant interaction reveals that PCAOB inspection likelihood moderates the effect of compensation form, such that option compensation only causes audit committee members to not recommend recording the proposed adjustment when PCAOB inspection likelihood is low. These results allow stakeholders to gain valuable insights into ways in which loyalties that have been potentially misaligned may be realigned by regulatory requirements aimed at improving the corporate governance process.

Article Citation:

Julie Persellin. 2013. The Influence of PCAOB Inspections on Audit Committee Members’ Judgments. Behavioral Research in Accounting, Vol. 25 (2), pp. 97-114.

It is unclear in theory and practice whether knowledge-based international new ventures ( KINVs) can develop into global operating firms within a limited period of time, how and with what IP strategies they can achieve such a success. Conducting an in-depth case study of Wacom, the global leader of graphical tablets, we address the process of this KNIV becoming a global player by adopting intellectual property strategies. We track its market expansion using longitudinal trademark data, patent data, and information on establishing foreign subsidiaries and financial performance. Our findings show that Wacom has achieved large scale global operations in lead and lag markets by integrating low–and high–commitment entry modes, and appropriate intellectual property strategies．

Article Citation:

Q. Li, Deli Yang, T. Yu, and S. Wu. 2015. From International New Ventures to Global Operating Firms: Market Expansion and Intellectual Property Strategies. Studies in the Science of Science 36 (8) 161-172

Despite academic consensus on the concomitant power of triple contexts (country, industry and firm) for business, debates remain as to which context plays more salient a role to drive brand performance. This paper investigates how the triple contexts affect customers’ views of corporate brands and how such views impact on their assessment of brand performance (satisfaction, loyalty and perceived success). This is a comparative study of two search engines – Google and Baidu – from Chinese netizens’ perspective, based on the structural equation modeling of 2151 valid questionnaire responses. We found that the direct (firm) and indirect (country and industry) impact of triple contexts has explained 94% of the variations in netizens’ views. Comparatively, the leading local and foreign search engines have performed superbly, but significantly differently although the firm context has exerted equal impact on both firms. Rather than simultaneous impact, a chain relationship is evident toward brand performance. The findings can aid managers’ understanding of the triple-contextual relationships, their different degrees of influence on brand performance, and the comparative advantages and disadvantages of local and foreign brands in the international arena.

Article Citation:

Deli Yang, Mahmot Sonmez, Qinghai Li, and Yibing Duan. 2015. The Power of Triple Contexts on Customer-Based Brand Performance–A Comparative Study of Baidu and Google from Chinese Netizens’ Perspective. International Business Review, Vol. 25 (1), pp. 11-22

In an effort to explore the shortage of female sport officials, we examined the experience of eight former female basketball officials from five geographically diverse states in the U.S. who voluntarily left the role. Specifically, we asked former female basketball officials to describe their workplace experiences. Utilizing a phenomenological approach and workplace incivility framework, the results indicated that the felt social inequity for female officials detracted from the participants experiencing a sense of community in the workplace, which ultimately led to their discontinuation in the role. Results indicate four key factors that created this uncivil work environment. An examination of the data revealed four major themes. Specifically the female basketball officials reported experiencing a Lack of Mutual Respect from male counterparts; Perceived Inequity of Policies; a Lack of Role Modeling and Mentoring for and from female officials; and experiencing more Gendered Abuse than did their male counterparts. The combination of these four factors exacerbated the female officials' inability to connect to the officiating community and led to their withdrawal from the role. The results further indicate that women officials likely threatened the hegemonic characteristics of a sport setting. Although females have made great strides in terms of sport participation, the practical implications of this research suggest that understanding females in workplace roles, such as officiating, is vital if social equity is to be achieved in the sporting community.

Article Citation:

Jacob K. Tingle, Stacy Warner, and Pamm Kellett. 2014. The Experience of Former Women Officials and the Impact on the Sporting Community. Sex Roles, Vol. 71 (1-2), pp. 7-20.

Referees are key sport personnel who have important responsibilities both on- and off- the field. Organized competition would not survive without referees, yet little is known about what cause referees to discontinue in the role. This research examines the experiences of former referees so that managers may better understand strategies that might encourage more referees to be retained. Fifteen previous basketball referees were interviewed about their refereeing experience. Ten themes emerged that were related to the sport development stages of referee recruitment, referee retention, and referee advancement. The results indicate that issues experienced during the retention phase (Problematic Social Interaction, Training/Mentoring, and Lack of Referee Community) and then at the advancing stage (Lack of Administrator Consideration, Administrator Decision Making, and Sport Policies) are linked to eventual departure from the role. Interestingly, off-court factors were reported as more influential in the decision to leave. Managerial strategies and implications are discussed.

Article Citation:

Stacy Warner, Jacob K. Tingle, Pamm Kellett. 2013. Officiating Attrition: The Experiences of Referees Via a Sport Development Lens. Journal of Sport Management, Vol. 27, pp. 316-328.

Outstanding student employees are essential for campus recreation programs to achieve organizational goals. To that end, this study examined the effectiveness of a leadership development program in which three groups of campus recreation (rec sports) student employees participated at various levels in the following: on campus training, an off-site retreat, a scavenger hunt, and biweekly meetings. Using a quasi-experimental design, data were collected in two phases from 51 students and measured the growth of each student's leadership capabilities as reported using the Student Leadership Practices Inventory. Statistical analyses revealed that group membership did significantly affect growth in the student's leadership capacity. Campus recreation programs are increasingly held accountable and rec sports professionals must understand assessment is vital. The results of this study reveal that rec sports professionals can impact the development of student leaders. Specifically, the findings indicate that growth does not occur with condensed training. Indeed lasting, meaningful growth transpires only when leadership lessons are embedded using a sustained approach. Implications for research and practice are presented.

Article Citation:

Jacob K. Tingle, Christina Cooney, Seth E. Asbury, Sheldon Tate. 2013. Developing a Student Employee Leadership Program: The Importance of Evaluating Effectiveness. Recreational Sports Journal, Vol. 37(1), pp. 2-13.

For some years now, marketers have been praising for a more holistic approach of a company's marketing efforts across all areas. However, traditional models show serious limitations to address the complexities of managing all of a company's touch points with a customer. Agent-based modeling (ABM) has opened the door to explore the unfolding behaviors and outputs of an increasingly connected and interactive marketplace. The contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it provides researchers with a state-of-the-art repository for this strand of research. This facilitates the identification of relevant gaps in the literature and future research avenues. Second, it contributes to assess the way ABM has improved our understanding of the dynamics of markets and its participants when marketing strategies are implemented. Both goals aim at showing the various ways that social simulation has expanded our understanding of marketing and the future research opportunities for both, marketing and computer scientists.

Article Citation:

Mario Gonzalez-Fuentes. 2013. The Contribution of Social Simulation in the Advancement of Marketing Issues and Challenges, International Journal of Agent Technologies and Systems, Vol. 5(1), pp. 19-31.

In this paper, we posit experiential learning projects in business as a valuable alternative to internships to meet the new AACSB standards for accreditation. While internships have traditionally been used as the main method to provide hands-on learning experiences for students in business schools, their effective implementation imposes stringent demands on faculty, curriculum, and program resources. The pedagogical and administrative benefits of experiential learning projects (ELP) are analyzed using the Kolb model and the literature on learning. We illustrate the versatility of the ELP learning tool by describing two very different applications currently in use at a small private university and advance guidelines for the effective implementation and assessment of experiential learning projects in business curricula.

Article Citation:

Rita D. Kosnik, Jacob K. Tingle, and Edwin L. Blanton. 2013. Transformational Learning in Business Education: The Pivotal Role of Experiential Learning Projects. American Journal of Business Education, Vol. 6 (6), pp. 613-630.

Organizational change creates uncertainty and stimulates fairness judgments of employees, which are important determinants of employee attitudes and behaviors. This study investigated the antecedents of employees’ change-related fairness perceptions. Drawing on change implementation literature, attribution theory, and personality research, the authors examined how the effect of management’s change support on individuals’ change fairness perceptions is moderated by change attributions and employees’ conscientiousness level. Using multilevel data from 693 employees in 29 organizations engaged in a variety of changes, hierarchical linear modeling analysis indicated that the relationships between managements’ change support and individual employees’ change fairness perceptions were positive in most conditions. The exception was when the change was externally attributed to conditions not controllable by the management and when the affected employees had lower levels of conscientiousness.

Article Citation:

Yi Liu, Steven Caldwell, Donald Fedor, and David Herold. When Does Management’s Support for a Change Translate to Perceptions of Fair Treatment? The Moderating Roles of Change Attributions and Conscientiousness. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 48 (4), pp. 441-462.

Since the turn of the century, 'patent trolls' have emerged as one of the most topical debates among patent holders. However, nearly ten years later, stakeholders are still unable to reach consensus as to the 'right' or 'wrong' of trolls. Against this backdrop, our debates open with the landmark case of Blackberry between RIM and NTP to provide thoughts as to whether NTP is considered a troll. Then there is a focus on some conceptual issues surrounding patent trolls, and its origin citing relevant mini-cases. This column also lays out the fierce arguments for or against patent trolling among scholars and practitioners and reasoning for the trolling existence. The debates end with some reflections on the implication of patent trolling phenomena on patent systems, particularly the U.S. structure, subsequently, proposing some relevant solutions.

Article Citation:

Deli Yang. 2012. Patent Trolls: Legit Enforcers or Harassers? Journal of Intellectual Property Rights, Vol. 17 (6), pp. 573-577.

A key challenge resulting from the rapid growth of the information technology (IT) industry is finding enough qualified workers to fill available positions. In this paper, Holland’s Theory of Occupational Themes (TOT), Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), and Career Construction Theory (CCT) are used to investigate how job related beliefs, career planning perceptions, and occupational congruence work together to influence students’ career decisions, major satisfaction, and academic performance. Using 210 student responses, we empirically test a theoretically derived research model. Our findings suggest that job security is a strong predictor of both IT career optimism and career planning ability. In addition, career optimism and career planning ability are important antecedents of students’ IT career commitment, which significantly influences satisfaction with academic major. A modest portion of academic performance was explained by the model. Notably, occupational congruence was found to be a poor predictor of academic major satisfaction and performance.

Article Citation:

Diana Young, Darrell Carpenter, and Michele Maasberg. 2017. An Examination of Factors that Influence Students' IT Career Decisions. Journal of Computer Information Systems (forthcoming).

While research has demonstrated positive productivity and quality gains from using agile software development methods (SDMs), some experts argue that no single SDM suits every project context. We lack empirical evidence about the project contextual factors that influence when one should use these methods. Research suggests several factors to explain agile method appropriateness; however, generalizable empirical evidence supporting these suggestions is weak. To address this need, we used contingency theory and the information processing model to develop the agile contingent project/method fit model. Subsequently, we used the model to analyze the influence of project contextual factors and agile practices on software development professionals’ perceptions regarding agile SDM appropriateness. We tested the model using survey data collected from 122 systems development professionals who provided information regarding: 1) contextual factors surrounding a recent agile development project, 2) agile practices applied during the course of that project, and 3) perceptions regarding the relative fit (appropriateness) of the agile method used. Linear regression identified several significant relationships between project contextual factors, agile practices, and respondents’ relative fit perceptions.

Article Citation:

Diana Young, Nicole Beebe, Glenn Dietrich, and Charles Zhechao Liu. 2017. An Empirical Examination of an Agile Contingent Project/Method Fit Model. Communications of the Association for Information Systems (forthcoming).

This study explores whether characteristics of the collaboration structure in software development teams affect development learning rates, with a secondary goal of testing product complexity as a moderator. We develop suitable hypotheses under the theoretical lens of cognitive load theory. The empirical study uses archival data on an ordinary least squares model to find significant associations between collaboration structure, product complexity and the learning rates exhibited by 230 development teams producing open source software. Results show two distinct subgroups of projects: The first subgroup exhibits an average 78% learning rate, and the other subgroup “unlearned”, i.e., productivity deteriorated over time instead of improved. In the learning subgroup, collaboration network density negatively impacted learning, while product complexity interacted with collaboration network centralisation and boundary spanning activity. In the unlearning subgroup, only network density impacted learning rates and no moderating effects were found. Practical implications and future opportunities for research are discussed.

Article Citation:

Jorge Colazo. 2016. A Cognitive Load View and Empirical Test of Collaboration Network Structure vs. Learning Rates in New Software Development. International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 20 (1).

We study the long-term trend of excess value and internal capital allocation of diversified firms from 1976 to 2013. The late 1970s and 1980s are characterized by large average diversification discount but narrow dispersion of excess value. Excess value of diversified firms becomes less negative on average after 1990, but its dispersion grows larger. In contrast, capital allocation efficiency of diversified firms converges significantly over time. Three quarters of diversified firms do not suffer from severe capital misallocation after the early 2000s. The effect of capital allocation efficiency on excess value varies over time and becomes larger in recent years.

Article Citation:

M. Mazur and Shage Zhang. 2015. Diversification Discount over the Long Run: New Perspective. Finance Research Letters, Vol. 15, pp. 93-98.

The problem-solving view of new product development sees the innovation process as a series of problem-solving loops broken down into three stages: problem detection, analysis and removal. We link this framework with lead user-driven innovation regarding software and show that effort by lead users (LUs) in each stage of the innovation problem solving process is, in varying degrees, associated with the source code’s quality, the productivity of the development process and the software’s popularity. We also test whether front loading the problem solving process is associated with development performance and we find that front loading is associated with increased code quality but decreased development productivity. Empirical tests are carried out with data from open source software projects. Findings potentially impact the design and management of online communities to help product development.

Article Citation:

Jorge Colazo. 2014. Performance Implications of Stage-Wise Lead User Participation in Software Development Problem Solving. Decision Support Systems 67 (November), pp. 100-108.

Researchers studying the economics of information security have traditionally focused on the use of rational choice decision models for evaluating investment alternatives. Security investment decisions involve risk, and several researchers have noted that risk-related decisions often violate the fundamental principles of rational choice decision models. This study tests the prevailing presumption in published research that information security investment decisions are made in an entirely rational manner. We empirically validated our hypothesis that information security investment decision makers in fact exhibit preference reversals when faced with competing budget alternatives involving risk. Specifically, we observed the framing effect under prospect theory, which suggests that individuals exhibit unique risk attitudes when evaluating gain-related and loss-related risk decisions. Accordingly, we argue that existing, widely accepted rational choice and economic models for information security investments need to be supplemented with risk perception measurement and account for individual level decision biases.

Article Citation:

Nicole Beebe, F. Chang, and Diana Young. 2014. Framing Information Security Budget Requests to Influence Investment Decisions. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Vol 35 (1), pp. 133-143.