2006 Outstanding Auditing Dissertation Award

Presented by Steve Glover

Dr. Tina D. Carpenter (left) receives the 2006 Outstanding Auditing Dissertation Award presented by Steve Glover (right).

The 2006 Outstanding Auditing Dissertation Award was presented to Dr. Tina D. Carpenter, Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia. Professor Jane L. Reimers (Florida State University) was recognized as the dissertation chair. Dr. Carpenter's dissertation is entitled, "Partner Influence, Team Brainstorming, and Fraud Risk Assessment: Some Implications of SAS No. 99." The research questions in the dissertation relate to SAS No. 99 and the assessment of the fraud risk. Auditing standards now require audit teams to brainstorm, discuss, and plan procedures around potential fraud risks for each audit. However, the usefulness of brainstorming sessions has not been established. According to standard setters, the effectiveness of these brainstorming sessions will depend on the tone set by audit partners. Dr. Carpenter's dissertation evaluates the effects of partner's influence on team brainstorming sessions and the resulting fraud judgments. The research brings together several streams of research including: group decision making, brainstorming, fraud risk assessments, and accountability. Dr. Carpenter is able to use the applicable theory and prior research to predict how auditors would react to brainstorming and to the partner's influence when making risk assessments. She used groups of three practicing auditors—a manager, a senior, and a staff—for her experiment. Her results show that when the partner is concerned about efficiency, brainstorming sessions result in a loss of quality fraud ideas that were generated by individual auditors prior to the brainstorming session. In contrast, when the partner is concerned about effectiveness, brainstorming sessions resulted in new quality fraud ideas that were not generated by the respective individual auditors.

The committee believes this research has a strong potential for publication in a top scholarly journal, it makes an important and timely contribution to the audit literature, it brings together and extends several streams of research, and it addresses a research question standard setters and practitioners are interested in. The SEC and all the participating firms have asked for a copy of Dr. Carpenter's dissertation and she also visited the firms to explain her results.

Many high quality dissertations were nominated for the 2006 award. The section solicits nominations from the membership by July 1 of each year and the award is presented at the following Midyear Conference.

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