Accounting Organizations and Society最新文献_第3页

The entrainment cycle: Understanding professionals’ compliance with extreme work hours in professional service firms 娱乐周期：了解专业服务公司的专业人员对极端工作时间的依从性

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-05-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2025.101597

Ioana Lupu, Shanming Liu

Extreme work hours in professional service firms (PSFs) are often attributed to organizational control mechanisms such as time sheets, utilization targets, and performance evaluations. This paper introduces the concept of the entrainment cycle to explore how these controls foster professionals' compliance with extreme work patterns. The entrainment cycle explains how individuals become continuously synchronized with the collective rhythm of the organization. Drawing on 159 interviews with 81 professionals across two PSFs, the study explores how formal and normative controls synchronize individuals with the fast-paced organizational tempo. The findings reveal how bureaucratic and cultural entrainment mechanisms contribute to synchronization. Moreover, emotions and bodily responses play a critical role in making professionals internalize the organization's rhythms. Periods of synchronization trigger positive feedback loops in which heightened emotions and bodily responses reinforce individuals' attachment to work. These synchronized periods contrast with moments of desynchronization in which professionals experience negative feedback loops characterized by guilt, anxiety, and physical withdrawal symptoms. The bodily and emotional mechanisms this study reveals reinforce professionals' synchronization with collective rhythms, locking them into an entrainment cycle that perpetuates long hours and ever-intensifying work. This study offers new insights into how controls affect individuals and organizations in significant, far-reaching, and often unobtrusive ways.

专业服务公司（psf）的极端工作时间通常归因于组织控制机制，如时间表、利用目标和绩效评估。本文介绍了娱乐周期的概念，以探索这些控制如何培养专业人员对极端工作模式的遵从性。夹带循环解释了个人如何不断地与组织的集体节奏同步。通过对两个psf中81名专业人士的159次访谈，该研究探讨了正式和规范的控制如何使个人与快节奏的组织节奏同步。研究结果揭示了官僚主义和文化娱乐机制是如何促进同步的。此外，情绪和身体反应在使专业人员内化组织节奏方面发挥着关键作用。同步的周期会引发积极的反馈循环，在这种循环中，高涨的情绪和身体反应会加强个人对工作的依恋。这些同步的时期与不同步的时刻形成对比，在不同步的时刻，专业人士会经历以内疚、焦虑和身体戒断症状为特征的负反馈循环。这项研究揭示的身体和情感机制加强了专业人士与集体节奏的同步，将他们锁定在一个长时间、高强度工作的娱乐循环中。这项研究提供了新的见解，了解控制如何以重要的、深远的、通常不引人注目的方式影响个人和组织。

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引用次数: 0

What makes a rating useable? Shifting epistemic practices in the ESG rating field 是什么让评级有用？ESG评级领域认知实践的转变

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-05-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2025.101598

Michelle van Weeren , Clarence Bluntz

In the last three decades, a new field has emerged around the production and consumption of ratings seeking to reflect corporate performance concerning environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters. By studying the production and transformation of a rating in this field, we contribute to recent discussions about “cultural fields of accounting”, where calculative innovations are developed by entities operating beyond formal rules or regulations. We analyze how an ESG rating agency tried to set a standard for a “holistic” ESG rating, while interactions between the agency and diverse field actors led to the shifting and hybridizing of logics underlying its rating practices. Building on the literature on production and consumption thinking in epistemic practice, we analyze how the agency transformed its rating from an “accurate” representation of sustainability performance to a useable reference for market actors. This shift provoked an acceleration of epistemic processes, a hollowing-out of analysts' judgment, and a progressive evaporation of their faith in the ratings' potential to disrupt existing investment practices. We discuss the implications of our findings for a better understanding of rating processes and their effects on the transformative potential of ESG ratings, which are ultimately shaped by investors’ preferences. Our case also hints at potential starting points for the diffusion of alternative logics in market-based accounting fields through a hybrid epistemic approach.

在过去的三十年里，围绕评级的生产和消费出现了一个新的领域，旨在反映企业在环境、社会和治理（ESG）方面的表现。通过研究该领域评级的产生和转换，我们为最近关于“会计文化领域”的讨论做出了贡献，其中计算创新是由超越正式规则或法规的实体开发的。我们分析了一家ESG评级机构如何试图为“整体”ESG评级设定标准，而该机构与不同领域参与者之间的互动导致了其评级实践背后逻辑的转变和混杂。基于认识论实践中关于生产和消费思维的文献，我们分析了该机构如何将其评级从可持续性绩效的“准确”代表转变为市场参与者的可用参考。这种转变引发了认知过程的加速，分析师判断的空心化，以及他们对评级可能破坏现有投资实践的信心的逐渐消失。我们讨论了我们的研究结果对更好地理解评级过程及其对ESG评级变革潜力的影响的影响，这些评级最终由投资者的偏好决定。我们的案例还暗示了通过混合认知方法在以市场为基础的会计领域传播替代逻辑的潜在起点。

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引用次数: 0

What board-level control mechanisms changed in banks following the 2008 financial crisis? A descriptive study 2008年金融危机后，银行董事会层面的控制机制发生了哪些变化？描述性研究

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-05-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2025.101596

Shelley Xin Li , Shivaram Rajgopal , Suraj Srinivasan , Yu Ting Forester Wong

Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) identified major shortcomings in bank board governance, contributing to systemic risk management failures. This study adapts a management control framework and empirically examines changes in board-level “process control” and “input control” mechanisms in 95 large U.S. bank holding companies (2000–2015) and contrasts these with 1,452 nonbanks. Our findings indicate that most post-2008 improvements occurred in “process controls,” e.g. Chief Risk Officer (CRO) appointments increased from 53 % pre-crisis to 91 % post-crisis, with significantly more banks establishing a dedicated risk committee and identifying the committee responsible for reputation management. We also find progress in “input control” related to domain knowledge with an increase of 16 % in new bank directors with prior risk management experience, and significant increase in directors with other relevant domain knowledge. We observed limited or no change in control mechanisms related to improving the board members’ ability to voice different perspectives or commit more time to their role. Our results show that improvements in certain types of controls seem to have taken precedence over others which have implications for explaining and implementing changes in corporate governance and control mechanisms.

2008年金融危机后，金融危机调查委员会（FCIC）发现了银行董事会治理的主要缺陷，这些缺陷导致了系统性风险管理的失败。本研究采用管理控制框架，实证研究了95家美国大型银行控股公司（2000-2015年）董事会层面“过程控制”和“投入控制”机制的变化，并将其与1452家非银行公司进行了对比。我们的研究结果表明，2008年后的大多数改善发生在“流程控制”方面，例如，首席风险官（CRO）的任命从危机前的53%增加到危机后的91%，更多的银行建立了专门的风险委员会，并确定了负责声誉管理的委员会。我们还发现，在与领域知识相关的“输入控制”方面取得了进展，具有风险管理经验的新银行董事增加了16%，具有其他相关领域知识的董事显著增加。我们观察到，在提高董事会成员表达不同观点的能力或为其角色投入更多时间方面，控制机制的变化有限或没有变化。我们的研究结果表明，某些类型控制的改进似乎优先于其他类型的控制，这对解释和实施公司治理和控制机制的变化具有影响。

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引用次数: 0

Peer evaluations in diverse teams: How external validation of team performance influences ingroup favoritism 不同团队中的同伴评价：团队绩效的外部验证如何影响群体偏好

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-05-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2025.101595

Gerhard Speckbacher , Martin Wiernsperger

Subjective performance assessments carried out by evaluators at the same hierarchical level as the person being evaluated—commonly known as peer evaluations—are increasingly common in team-based work settings. While diversity can be beneficial to team performance in many ways, it can lead to ingroup favoritism in peer evaluations. Specifically, team members tend to evaluate the performance of peers they perceive as part of their ingroup—based on visible characteristics such as gender, organizational affiliation, or other shared traits—more favorably than that of peers they classify as outgroup. In two experiments, we examine how the timing of peer evaluations—either before or after external validation of team performance (e.g., feedback from managers or customers)—affects ingroup favoritism. We predict and find that when peer evaluations are conducted after a team’s success has been externally validated, ingroup favoritism is mitigated. In contrast, external validation of team failure does not reduce this bias. Our findings underscore the importance of aligning the timing of peer evaluations with the availability of team-external performance signals and offer practical insights for designing fairer and less biased peer evaluation systems.

由与被评估人员处于同一等级的评估人员进行的主观绩效评估——通常被称为同行评估——在基于团队的工作环境中越来越普遍。虽然多样性在很多方面都有利于团队绩效，但它可能会导致同事评估中的内部偏袒。具体来说，团队成员倾向于根据性别、组织隶属关系或其他共同特征等可见特征来评估他们认为属于内群体的同伴的表现，这比他们认为属于外群体的同伴更有利。在两个实验中，我们研究了同伴评估的时机——在团队绩效的外部验证之前或之后（例如，来自经理或客户的反馈）——如何影响团队内偏袒。我们预测并发现，当团队的成功得到外部验证后进行同行评估时，内部偏袒会得到缓解。相反，团队失败的外部验证并没有减少这种偏见。我们的研究结果强调了将同行评估的时间与团队外部绩效信号的可用性保持一致的重要性，并为设计更公平、更少偏见的同行评估系统提供了实用的见解。

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引用次数: 0

Inconsistent responses to uncooperative client manager behavior: When auditors’ judgments and actions diverge 对不合作客户经理行为的不一致反应：当审计师的判断和行动出现分歧时

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-05-02 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2025.101593

Michael A. Ricci, Dan Rimkus

Auditors frequently encounter uncooperative clients that make evidence collection more difficult, but prior research points to conflicting perspectives on auditor reactions to this behavior. To add clarity, we conduct four studies. In Study 1, we predict and find that staff auditors increase their skeptical judgments in response to uncooperative clients, but also decrease their skeptical actions, creating an inconsistency that contradicts the audit risk model. We also find that the inconsistency is driven by participant concerns that taking actions against uncooperative clients will induce anxiety. In Study 2, we replicate these results, but also find that the inconsistency is reduced when actions require less interpersonal contact with the uncooperative client. A third experiment (Study 3) and an accompanying survey (Study 4) indicate that client personnel, especially those with more experience, anticipate staff auditor responses to less cooperative behavior and exploit these responses when misreporting or attempting to avoid auditor scrutiny. Altogether, this paper develops theory about inconsistent auditor reactions to uncooperative clients, has methodological implications, and is relevant to practitioners concerned about inconsistency between auditor judgment and action.

审计师经常遇到不合作的客户，这使得证据收集变得更加困难，但先前的研究指出了审计师对这种行为的反应的相互矛盾的观点。为了更加清晰，我们进行了四项研究。在研究1中，我们预测并发现，员工审计人员在面对不合作客户时，会增加怀疑判断，但也会减少怀疑行为，从而产生与审计风险模型相矛盾的不一致。我们还发现，这种不一致是由参与者担心对不合作的客户采取行动会引起焦虑所驱动的。在研究2中，我们重复了这些结果，但也发现当行动需要与不合作的客户进行较少的人际接触时，不一致性就会减少。第三个实验（研究3）和附带的调查（研究4）表明，客户人员，特别是那些经验更丰富的人员，预期员工审计师对不太合作的行为的反应，并在误报或试图逃避审计师审查时利用这些反应。总之，本文发展了关于审计师对不合作客户的不一致反应的理论，具有方法论意义，并且与关注审计师判断和行动之间不一致的从业者相关。

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引用次数: 0

The power of small talk: How small talk and psychological ownership influence managers’ communication defensiveness during audit inquiry 闲聊的力量：闲聊和心理所有权如何影响审计询问中管理者的沟通防御

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-04-09 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2025.101592

Nikki L. MacKenzie , Christopher P. Agoglia

The audit process requires frequent communication between auditors and client managers. Often, the most knowledgeable managers are involved in the work relating to an audit inquiry. As such, they may feel a sense of “ownership” over the related work. When threatened, psychological ownership can cause individuals to behave defensively, which may pose a challenge for auditors. Theory suggests that how auditors begin these inquiries (e.g., using small talk) may influence managers' behavior. Through two experiments, we find that managers with higher psychological ownership are more likely to respond defensively to an audit inquiry relating to a potential inventory obsolescence issue. Additionally, we find that the use of professional small talk magnifies managers’ defensive responses and some evidence that social small talk helps mitigate defensive responses. Further, small talk improves the perceived rapport between the manager and the auditor, compared to no small talk.

审计过程需要审核员和客户经理之间的频繁沟通。通常，最有见识的管理人员会参与审计调查的相关工作。因此，他们可能会对相关工作有一种“所有权”感。当受到威胁时，心理上的所有权会导致个人采取防御行为，这可能会对审计人员构成挑战。理论表明，审计师如何开始这些询问（例如，使用闲聊）可能会影响管理者的行为。通过两个实验，我们发现具有较高心理所有权的管理者更有可能对与潜在库存过时问题相关的审计询问做出防御性反应。此外，我们发现，使用专业闲聊放大了管理者的防御反应，一些证据表明，社交闲聊有助于减轻防御反应。此外，与没有闲聊相比，闲聊可以改善经理和审计师之间的关系。

引用次数: 0

Shaping collective action in financial markets through popular expertise: An analysis of Due Diligence posts on WallStreetBets 通过大众专业知识塑造金融市场的集体行动：对 WallStreetBets 上 "尽职调查 "帖子的分析

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-02-28 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2024.101588

Yves Gendron , Alexandre Madelaine , Luc Paugam , Hervé Stolowy

In 2021, a social movement rallying retail investors unexpectedly shocked Wall Street, forcing a prominent multi-billion-dollar hedge fund to shut down one year later, after incurring massive financial losses. Social movements in financial markets have significantly developed in the wake of the 2007–09 financial crisis, resulting in the emergence of various collective actions. We analyze one recent example of such action undertaken by the r/WallStreetBets (WSB) community on Reddit, which disrupted the stock prices of several “meme stocks” (e.g., GameStop) by disseminating influential investment narratives. We analyze the 150 most upvoted Due Diligence posts on WSB and interview eight members of its community. We find that a popular expertise in investment narratives emerged, developed, and was propagated on this digital platform. WSB authors' claim to popular expertise is made in a hybrid language combining traditional financial expertise with an accessible and entertaining writing style, complemented by references to pop culture. Our analysis brings out a growing resentment among retail investors about the unfairness of financial markets, and its role in mobilizing them for collective action that challenged the existing order of things. Yet this widespread resentment did not spontaneously translate into a meaningful, sustainable collective action initiative. Our thesis is that the development of popular expertise played an instrumental role in the formation of WSB's collective action initiative targeting several perceived investment opportunities.

2021年，一场召集散户投资者的社会运动出乎意料地震惊了华尔街，迫使一家知名的数十亿美元对冲基金在遭受巨额财务损失后，在一年后关闭。金融市场的社会运动在2007-09年金融危机之后显著发展，导致各种集体行动的出现。我们分析了Reddit上r/WallStreetBets （WSB）社区最近采取的此类行动的一个例子，该社区通过传播有影响力的投资叙事，扰乱了几只“模因股”（例如GameStop）的股价。我们分析了WSB上150个投票最多的尽职调查帖子，并采访了其社区的8名成员。我们发现，在这个数字平台上，一种流行的投资叙事专业知识出现、发展和传播。《华尔街日报》的作者声称自己拥有流行的专业知识，这是一种混合语言，将传统的金融专业知识与通俗易懂的娱乐写作风格结合起来，并辅以流行文化的参考。我们的分析表明，散户投资者对金融市场的不公平越来越不满，并认为金融市场在动员他们采取集体行动挑战现有秩序方面发挥了作用。然而，这种普遍的怨恨并没有自发地转化为有意义的、可持续的集体行动倡议。我们的论点是，大众专业知识的发展在WSB针对几个感知到的投资机会的集体行动倡议的形成中发挥了重要作用。

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引用次数: 0

The effects of performance-based incentive frequency on collusion 绩效激励频率对串谋行为的影响

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-02-17 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2025.101591

Ashley K. Sauciuc

A common set of problematic conditions exist across many of the most egregious cases of collusion in recent decades (e.g., Enron, WorldCom, Wells Fargo), including weak internal control systems, intense pressure to reach nearly impossible targets, and social pressure that encourages employees to trade their own morals to conform with group norms. I capture this core set of conditions in a carefully designed laboratory experiment to examine whether and how an important element of compensation contracting—incentive frequency—may foster adverse norms. Specifically, I predict and find that incentive frequency influences how individuals rationalize collusion, thereby affecting the reporting norms that develop within groups. Groups with relatively infrequent incentives oscillate between collusion and truthful reporting, consistent with moral licensing behavior; whereas frequent incentives produce a spillover effect whereby collusion persists, consistent with ethical erosion. These results have important implications for compensation design and the use of management control systems.

近几十年来，在许多令人震惊的共谋案件中（例如，安然、世通、富国银行），存在着一系列共同的问题条件，包括薄弱的内部控制系统，实现几乎不可能实现的目标的巨大压力，以及鼓励员工牺牲自己的道德来遵守群体规范的社会压力。我在一个精心设计的实验室实验中捕捉到了这组核心条件，以检验薪酬契约的一个重要因素——激励频率——是否以及如何可能助长不利的规范。具体而言，我预测并发现激励频率影响个人如何合理化串通，从而影响群体内部发展的报告规范。动机相对较少的群体在串通和如实报道之间摇摆，符合道德许可行为；然而，频繁的激励会产生溢出效应，从而导致串通行为持续存在，这与道德侵蚀是一致的。这些结果对薪酬设计和管理控制系统的使用具有重要意义。

引用次数: 0

The effects of a supportive learning culture and rank on professional skepticism in information search 支持性学习文化和等级对信息搜索专业怀疑态度的影响

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-01-25 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2025.101590

Therese Grohnert , Wim H. Gijselaers , Roger H.G. Meuwissen , Ken T. Trotman

Auditors at all ranks should be skeptical when searching for information throughout audits. However, we lever domain learning theory from educational psychology to posit that their skepticism unlikely develops evenly across ranks, but rather depends on a supportive learning culture, a construct from the management literature. To test that perceived learning culture moderates the association between auditor rank and skeptical information search, we use a laboratory study with 166 Dutch auditors at a Big 4 firm and follow-up interviews with seven top leaders of that firm. A more supportive perceived learning culture is associated with more skeptical information search, but only in audit managers and partners - not in associates and seniors. Interviewees attribute this pattern to values acquired over time through socialization, role expectations, knowledge development, and wider task characteristics.

在整个审计过程中寻找信息时，各级审计员都应该持怀疑态度。然而，我们利用教育心理学的领域学习理论，假设他们的怀疑主义不可能在各个阶层中均匀发展，而是取决于一种支持性的学习文化，这是一种来自管理文献的构建。为了检验感知学习文化是否调节了审计师级别与怀疑信息搜索之间的关系，我们对一家四大会计师事务所的166名荷兰审计师进行了实验室研究，并对该公司的7位高层领导人进行了后续访谈。一个更支持性的感知学习文化与更怀疑的信息搜索相关，但只在审计经理和合伙人中，而不是在助理和高级职员中。受访者将这种模式归因于随着时间的推移通过社会化、角色期望、知识发展和更广泛的任务特征获得的价值观。

引用次数: 0

Navigating the spectrum of aggressiveness: Social dynamics and anxieties in tax planning 驾驭侵略性的光谱：税收筹划中的社会动态和焦虑

IF 3.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Accounting Organizations and Society

Pub Date : 2025-01-20 DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2025.101589

Marion Brivot, Suzanne Paquette, Zachary Huxley

This qualitative inquiry investigates how tax professionals understand aggressiveness in tax planning and how they position themselves on the spectrum of aggressiveness. Based on semi-structured interviews with 33 experienced Canadian tax professionals from top-10 accounting and law firms, we find that tax professionals understand aggressiveness through a web of inter-related considerations. These include creativity, complexity, legal ambiguity, and lucrativeness, associated with risks of tax audits, technical errors, disputes with tax authorities over legal interpretations, and reputational damage for the client, the tax professional, and their firm. These considerations and related risks are often a source of anxiety for tax professionals. Drawing on contemporary philosopher Charlie Kurth's distinction between “punishment anxiety” and “practical anxiety,” we identify an intricate interplay between these two forms of anxiety and a collective deliberation process involving clients and colleagues, each bringing their own risk-reward preferences, which shapes professionals' decisions of how aggressive they should be. The socio-affective conceptualization of aggressiveness that we propose in this study contributes to the tax literature by deepening our understanding of the elusive concept of tax aggressiveness. It also enriches the broader literature on accounting and finance professionals' emotions at work by documenting the analytical value of a nuanced understanding of anxiety. Furthermore, it advances the professional ethics literature by highlighting the moral significance of practical anxiety in professional judgment about risky, ethically sensitive issues.

这个定性调查调查税务专业人士如何理解侵略性在税收规划和他们如何定位自己在侵略性的频谱。基于对来自前10名会计和律师事务所的33名经验丰富的加拿大税务专业人士的半结构化访谈，我们发现税务专业人士通过一系列相互关联的考虑因素来理解侵略性。其中包括创造性、复杂性、法律模糊性和盈利性，这些都与税务审计风险、技术错误、与税务机关就法律解释产生的纠纷以及对客户、税务专业人员及其公司的声誉损害有关。这些考虑和相关风险往往是税务专业人士焦虑的根源。根据当代哲学家查理·库尔斯（Charlie Kurth）对“惩罚焦虑”和“实践焦虑”的区分，我们确定了这两种形式的焦虑之间复杂的相互作用，以及涉及客户和同事的集体审议过程，每个人都有自己的风险回报偏好，这决定了专业人士应该采取多大的激进行动。我们在本研究中提出的攻击性的社会情感概念化，通过加深我们对税收攻击性这一难以捉摸的概念的理解，有助于税收文献。它还通过记录对焦虑的细致理解的分析价值，丰富了有关会计和金融专业人士在工作中的情绪的更广泛的文献。此外，通过强调实践焦虑在对风险、道德敏感问题的职业判断中的道德意义，促进了职业伦理文献的发展。

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引用次数: 0