It's Complicated

Hosted by Steve Matzke

Summary

Firms often ask supervisors to appraise subordinates' potential to succeed in higher-level positions. These appraisals can take place within social and organizational contexts that emphasize improving the experiences of females in male-dominated settings. Using this context, researchers Anne Farrell and Michele Frank, in their paper, “It's Complicated: How a Subordinate's Gender Influences Supervisors' Use of Past Performance Information When Appraising Potential” published in the Journal of Management Accounting Research, experimentally examine whether supervisors differentially interpret and use the same accounting information when appraising the potential of subordinates of different genders.

Guests

Anne Farrell, Ph.D., CPA, CGMA, Interim Department Chair and PricewaterhouseCoopers Professor of Accountancy, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

Michele Frank, Ph.D., CPA, Associate Professor of Accountancy, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

Lori Kaiser, CPA, CEO Kaiser Consulting

RPA: Robotic Process Automation

Hosted by Steve Matzke

Summary

In 2019, a paper, titled “Intelligent Process Automation in Audit” was published in the Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting. In this paper, the Author, Abby Zhang, formally introduces IPA to auditing practitioners and researchers. Her paper has direct implication to practitioners since it provides a methodological framework for them to implement Intelligent Process Automation in audit engagements.

Guests

Chanyuan (Abigail) Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Accounting Information System department at Rutgers Business School. Her research addresses the impacts of emerging technologies on auditing, especially Robotic Process Automation. She has been working with several medium-sized CPA firms in the United States to explore the use of RPA in their audit procedures. Abby has also authored and instructed the RPA course modules for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Nick Loguercio is a Certified Public Accountant and an Audit Partner at the Accounting Firm Berdon,LLP. He joined Berdon in 1985 and has served as an Audit Partner since 1998. Nick has helped drive the firm forward by serving on the Executive Committee and as the founding member of the Firm’s Data Analytics to Create Efficiencies Team. He has leveraged his experience with clients in the Real Estate and Hospitality industries. Nick is also a Certified Fraud Examiner and has provided litigation support services to clients on a variety of cases.

Artificial Intelligence

Hosted by Steve Matzke

Summary

Article: Research Ideas for Artificial Intelligence in Auditing: The Formalization of Audit and Workforce Supplementation, Dr. Hussein Issa, Rutgers Business School, Journal of Emerging Technologies in accounting in 2016.

Some may say that the area of auditing has lagged business adoption in the past, but today, it is prime for partial automation due to its labor intensiveness and range of decision structures. Several accounting firms have made substantive investments in Artificial Intelligence. This paper proposes various areas of AI-related research to examine where this emerging technology is most promising. Moreover, this paper raises a series of methodological and evolutionary research questions aiming to study the AI-driven transformation of today’s world of audit into the assurance of the future.

Guests

Dr. Hussein Issa, Assistant Professor of AIS, Rutgers Business School

Catherine A. Banks, Director, Ernst & Young Foundation

Jonathan Shertok, Financial Services Audit and Innovation Manager, EY

Employee Satisfaction and Work-life Balance in Accounting Firms and Audit Quality

Hosted by Steve Matzke

Summary

The PCAOB’s audit-quality framework posits that superior inputs are essential for achieving high audit quality, and these inputs depend on the accounting firm’s ability to recruit and retain quality personnel. However, the link between these inputs and audit quality has gone largely unexplored due to a lack of data. In their paper, “Employee Satisfaction and Work–Life Balance in Accounting Firms and Audit Quality”, published in Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, Vol? No.? authors Jagan Krishnan and Joshua Khavis , use employee-level reviews of accounting firm employers from Glassdoor.com to examine perceptions of these inputs, and test whether accounting firms’ internal characteristics explain employee satisfaction and audit quality. Although work–life balance is not among the most important factors that are associated with audit employees’ overall satisfaction, better work–life balance is nonetheless associated with higher audit quality.

Guests

Jagan (Krish) Krishnan, Ph.D., C.A., CICA, is a Professor and Merves Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Accounting at the Fox School of Business, Temple University. His research interests are in the areas of audit quality, corporate governance, auditor litigation, regulation, and fraudulent financial reporting. He previously served as Editor of Accounting Horizons and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Accounting Review, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, and Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance. Prior to entering academia, he worked in the audit and consulting divisions of affiliates of EY and KPMG.

Joshua Khavis is an assistant professor of accounting at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He received his PhD in accounting from Temple University in 2019. He teaches Data Analytics for Accountants at the graduate level and his research interests include financial accounting, auditing, and answering elusive accounting questions with big data.

George Krull is a Grant Thornton LLP retired Partner. He served as a Trustee and President of the AICPA Foundation. He currently Co-Chairs the Missouri Society of CPAs Educational Foundation Board and is the Global Advisor for the University of Scranton’s DBA program in Accounting. He received his undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees from The Ohio State University, Oklahoma State University, and Michigan State University, respectively.