Kris Hardies

Are Female Auditors Still Women? Analyzing the Sex Differences Affecting Audit Quality

Previous research has hinted a potential impact of auditor gender on audit quality. It appears that, for example, men are less risk-averse than women. Female auditors may, therefore, express more severe audit opinions than male auditors. This paper addresses a potential major bias underlying the gender auditing research as it is not obvious that stereotypical believes about men and women are true or that findings from literature about the general population can be interpolated to the specific context of auditors.

On the Presence and Absence of CEO Gender Effects on Management Control Choices: An Empirical Investigation

Addressing the scarcity of gender research in management control studies, this study examines whether CEO gender is a significant variable in explaining cross-sectional variation in management control choices after controlling for firm and industry context, for the presence of a board and for the individual CEO’s experiences. Using survey data our results reveal an incremental explanatory power for CEO gender with control practices that to a large extent serve a CEO’s own managerial decision making, such as action planning and the use of financial performance measures for company target setting and evaluation. We observe no gender effect at all with respect to those controls that are used almost exclusively to communicate with and guide employees (i.e., reward, compensation, and administrative controls). Based on insights from the literature on stereotypical gender role attributes, the results of our study imply that female CEOs sometimes conform to their gender role for controls which serve their own decision making and conform to their leadership role when controls involve communicating, guidance, evaluating, and rewarding. With this study we contribute not only to the control literature, but also more broadly to manager-effect studies by integrating different literatures to provide more insight into when CEO gender matters to explain control choices. We illustrate that differences in context and differences in control purposes wipe out a number of stereotype-driven perceptions.

Gender Inequality in Small and Large Audit Firms

Women are still a minority in the audit profession, especially at the partner level. An increasing amount of literature has explored the sources of this gender inequality. Past studies have, however, neglected the possibility that the processes that lead to the (re)production of gender differences and hierarchies may differ between audit firms of different sizes. In this article, we combine quantitative with qualitative data to explore how gender inequalities regarding promotion and access to resources of power (at the partner level) might differ between audit firms of different sizes. Our data show that women who achieve partnership in large firms (but not in some smaller firms) are confronted with a second-level glass ceiling, as they do not play leading roles within their firms. This can be explained by the higher demands of commitment large firms place upon (prospective) partners and these firms’ greater focus on the commercial side of auditing.

Designing and validating the friendship quality on social network sites questionnaire

Abstract Social network sites (SNSs) provide adolescents with the opportunity to expand their social circle, which is associated with increased social capital. However, the social capital adolescents built depends on the quality of their friendships on SNSs. As no instruments are available to capture the quality of friendships on SNSs, this study designed and validated the Friendship Quality on Social Network Sites questionnaire (FQSNS-questionnaire). The questionnaire consists of five dimensions: satisfaction, companionship, help, intimacy, and self-validation. Explorative and confirmative factor analyses were applied on data of 1.695 friendships (i.e., offline-to-online, online-to-offline, and online friendships) gathered from 1.087 adolescents. Results pointed to a five-factor solution, applicable to any kind of friendship on SNSs and reflecting the proposed five dimensions of friendship quality. Multiple group confirmatory factor analyses supported measurement invariance across younger and older adolescents, and across boys and girls, at the levels of equal factor structure and loadings. Cronbachs alphas indicated a good internal consistency of each dimension. Correlation analysis indicated that the dimensions were strongly correlated to each other, which is unsurprising because they reflect the overall friendship quality. Based upon these results, we can conclude that dimensions of friendship quality can validly and reliably be assessed using the FQSNS-questionnaire.

FAR Research Project: Professional skepticism: a trending concept in need of understanding

1 Why is this research important and how does it contribute to practice? Regulators and standard setters emphasize professional skepticism as a key input to audit quality (e.g., AFM, 2014; PCAOB, 2015; IFIAR, 2015; IAASB, 2015). Indeed, a global recurring theme in audit inspection findings is instances in which auditors did not appropriately apply professional skepticism in their judgments and actions (IAASB, 2015). For example, IFIAR concluded from its 2014 Survey of Inspection Findings that: “A factor underlying many audit deficiencies is insufficient exercise of professional skepticism during performance of the audit” (IFIAR, 2015, p. 3). Hence, “IFIAR has suggested that enhanced professional skepticism by auditors will contribute significantly to improve the quality of the audit and that firms should prioritize efforts in this area” (IAASB, 2015, p. 12).