Evidence on the homogeneity of personality traits within the auditing profession

IF 8.3 2区 管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE Critical Perspectives on Accounting Pub Date : 2024-03-01 DOI:10.1016/j.cpa.2023.102584
Stephen K. Asare , Herman van Brenk , Kristina C. Demek
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Abstract

Audit firms’ diversity initiatives have focused on enhancing surface-level diversity (e.g., gender and race). While these initiatives serve an important social and business function, we argue that they may not enhance deep-level diversity (e.g., personality traits and thinking styles), creating a gap between rhetoric and reality in terms of deep-level characteristics. We combine critical and positivistic research perspectives to make sense of this rhetoric-reality gap and specifically examine personality trait diversity in audit firms. Focusing on deep-level traits is important because people may appear diverse while thinking and acting similarly. We use data from 981 auditors to examine personality trait diversity using the Five Factor Model: neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Our results show a remarkable homogeneity of personality traits for auditors within the same firm type or experience level. We also find important differences within each personality trait. For example, all firm types and experience levels tend to be more homogenous on extroversion and conscientiousness, but more diverse on openness. Taken together, the results suggest that audit firms remain largely homogenous at the personality level, notwithstanding their recent diversity rhetoric and initiatives. These results provide timely evidence to support audit firms’ efforts to re-evaluate and re-consider their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

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审计职业人格特征同质性的证据
审计公司的多元化举措侧重于加强表层多元化(如性别和种族)。虽然这些举措具有重要的社会和商业功能,但我们认为,它们可能无法增强深层次的多样性(如个性特征和思维方式),从而在深层次特征方面造成了言辞与现实之间的差距。我们结合批判性和实证主义研究视角来理解这种修辞与现实之间的差距,并具体研究了审计公司中的人格特质多样性。关注深层次特质非常重要,因为人们在思维和行为相似的情况下可能会表现出多样性。我们利用来自 981 名审计师的数据,采用五因子模型(神经质、外向性、开放性、宜人性和自觉性)来研究人格特质的多样性。我们的研究结果表明,同一事务所类型或同一经验水平的审计师的人格特质具有显著的同质性。我们还发现了每种人格特质之间的重要差异。例如,所有公司类型和经验水平的审计师在外向性和自觉性方面趋于同质化,但在开放性方面则更加多样化。综合来看,这些结果表明,尽管审计公司最近提出了多元化的言论和倡议,但在人格层面上,它们在很大程度上仍然是同质的。这些结果为支持审计公司重新评估和考虑其多元化、公平性和包容性工作提供了及时的证据。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
9.40
自引率
7.80%
发文量
91
期刊介绍: Critical Perspectives on Accounting aims to provide a forum for the growing number of accounting researchers and practitioners who realize that conventional theory and practice is ill-suited to the challenges of the modern environment, and that accounting practices and corporate behavior are inextricably connected with many allocative, distributive, social, and ecological problems of our era. From such concerns, a new literature is emerging that seeks to reformulate corporate, social, and political activity, and the theoretical and practical means by which we apprehend and affect that activity. Research Areas Include: • Studies involving the political economy of accounting, critical accounting, radical accounting, and accounting''s implication in the exercise of power • Financial accounting''s role in the processes of international capital formation, including its impact on stock market stability and international banking activities • Management accounting''s role in organizing the labor process • The relationship between accounting and the state in various social formations • Studies of accounting''s historical role, as a means of "remembering" the subject''s social and conflictual character • The role of accounting in establishing "real" democracy at work and other domains of life • Accounting''s adjudicative function in international exchanges, such as that of the Third World debt • Antagonisms between the social and private character of accounting, such as conflicts of interest in the audit process • The identification of new constituencies for radical and critical accounting information • Accounting''s involvement in gender and class conflicts in the workplace • The interplay between accounting, social conflict, industrialization, bureaucracy, and technocracy • Reappraisals of the role of accounting as a science and technology • Critical reviews of "useful" scientific knowledge about organizations
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