The results of this study highlight the important role that perceptions of client fairness play in endangering social exchange relationships between individual auditors and clients. Client commitment, endangered by perceived client fairness and support, can result in higher levels of value-added audit service. This study also has practical implications for accounting firms. Firms can encourage clients to treat their auditors fairly by including language in the engagement letter describing the importance of the timely provision of audit request, adequate working conditions, and other efforts to ensure a smooth audit process. Future research could also examine the costs and benefits associated with value-added audit service from the client’s perspective.  

Herda, D. N., and J. J. Lavelle. 2013. Auditor Commitment to Privately Held Clients and its Effect on Value-Added Audit Service. Auditing 32 (1).

The results of this study offer initial evidence that manager narcissism is an observable measure of elevated fraud risk. These findings have clear implications for audit practice. The results suggest that auditors are aware of the link between client narcissism and increased fraud attitude risk. Public accounting firms should emphasize the linkage between specific client manager personality traits and the increased likelihood of fraud-related behaviors in fraud risk assessment training. This study may also be useful to standard setters and auditing firms as a means to improve professional guidance regarding how to assess fraud attitude and the resulting effect on auditors’ fraud risk assessments.  

Johnson, E. N., J. R. Kuhn, B. A. Apostolou, and J. M. Hassell. 2013. Auditor Perceptions of Client Narcissism as a Fraud Attitude Risk Factor. Auditing 32 (1).

This paper extends previous work by examining how clients’ use of contending tactics affect auditors’ decisions during a negotiation, which separates itself from the research of the past by investigating the clients’ current negotiation tactics, not the tactics of the past. This paper also introduces the level-of-aspiration theory into consideration for auditor negotiation literature.

Bergner, J. M., S. A. Peffer and R. J. Ramsay. 2016. Concession, Contention, and Accountability in Auditor-Client Negotiations. Behavioral Research in Accounting 28 (1): 15-25

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The findings of this study are important for audit firms to consider when resolving financial reporting issues with client management. The overall pattern of our results illustrates that audit managers and audit partners intend to use different negotiation strategies and, therefore, substituting managers for partners in order to increase audit efficiency may in some contexts undermine audit effectiveness. Indeed, concern is warranted based on these results that suggest that a manager’s intended strategy entering negotiations with client management may be, pending context, substantially different and more client-outcome-oriented than the partners’ intended strategy would be. This could be worrisome for audit partners if they are not aware of negotiations that managers are undertaking on their own while out in the field. From a practice perspective, partners need to be aware of circumstances where managers negotiate with client management, since the tactics employed and potentially the outcomes obtained by the manager may be different than if the partner had been involved. Thus, based on our findings, audit partners may be the more effective negotiators and, thus, will have better negotiated outcomes than less experienced managers.

For more information on this study, please contact Susan McCracken.

McCracken, S., S.E. Salterio, and R.N. Schmidt. 2011. Do managers intend to use the same negotiation strategies as partners? Behavioral Research in Accounting 23 (1): 131-160.

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The findings provide evidence that auditors do hold a level of trust in client representatives and that the level of trust is associated with commonplace behaviors of client representative that attract trust.  The results of this study are important to make auditors and auditing standards setters aware of factors that may lead to greater auditor trust of client management and perhaps consider whether there may be a potential for excessive trust to overwhelm the auditor’s professional skepticism. Note that the study was unable to determine whether the levels of trust that the auditors had for the client were such that auditor judgment would be compromised.

Rennie, M. D., L. S. Kopp, and W. M. Lemon. 2010. Exploring Trust and the Auditor-Client Relationship: Factors Influencing the Auditor’s Trust of a Client Representative. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 29 (1): 279-293