IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/joares/v39y2001i3p583-597.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can Auditors Predict the Choices Made by Other Auditors?

Author

Listed:
  • Karim Jamal
  • Hun‐Tong Tan

Abstract

An implicit assumption of prior literature on strategic behavior of auditors is that auditors know the preferences of their colleagues. In this study, we conduct an experiment to investigate the validity of this assumption. In our experiment, we match a manager with a pair of top and mediocre audit seniors, as assessed by their firm. Each auditor predicts the choices that will be made by other auditors on two tasks that differ in their level of ambiguity. Our results show no difference in the accuracy among managers, top seniors, and mediocre seniors when they predict the choices made by specific individual auditors for both tasks. When predicting the number of managers and seniors who will choose a specific option on the high‐ambiguity task, managers outperform top seniors, who in turn outperform mediocre seniors. For the low‐ambiguity task, we find no difference among managers, top seniors, and mediocre seniors. Our results provide some limited support for models of strategic auditor behavior, and indicate that the ability to predict the choices of others is a dimension of an auditor’s expertise.

Suggested Citation

  • Karim Jamal & Hun‐Tong Tan, 2001. "Can Auditors Predict the Choices Made by Other Auditors?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(3), pages 583-597, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:39:y:2001:i:3:p:583-597
    DOI: 10.1111/1475-679X.00029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679X.00029
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1475-679X.00029?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jasmijn C. Bol & Cassandra Estep & Frank Moers & Mark E. Peecher, 2018. "The Role of Tacit Knowledge in Auditor Expertise and Human Capital Development," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(4), pages 1205-1252, September.
    2. Kim Ittonen & Karla Johnstone & Emma-Riikka Myllym�ki, 2015. "Audit Partner Public-Client Specialisation and Client Abnormal Accruals," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3), pages 607-633, September.
    3. William F. Messier, Jr. & Vincent Owhoso & Carter Rakovski, 2008. "Can Audit Partners Predict Subordinates' Ability to Detect Errors?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5), pages 1241-1264, December.
    4. Robert Correll & Karim Jamal & Linda A. Robinson, 2007. "Forum: Teaching Professional Judgement in Accounting," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(2), pages 123-140, May.
    5. Adam Esplin & Karim Jamal & Shyam Sunder, 2018. "Demand for and Assessment of Audit Quality in Private Companies," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 54(3), pages 319-352, September.
    6. Wu, Bin & Wu, Yaqian & Zhang, Min & Li, Jiyuan, 2024. "Opening the black box of human resource allocations in audit firms: The assignment of audit partners to audit engagements," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(2).
    7. Dierynck, Bart & Kadous, Kathryn & Peters, Christian P. H., 2023. "Learning in the auditing profession: A framework and future directions’," Other publications TiSEM eb74c8e4-bc4a-4b71-b88a-4, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Hun†Tong Tan & Karim Jamal, 2006. "Managing Perceptions of Technical Competence: How Well Do Auditors Know How Others View Them?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(3), pages 761-787, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:39:y:2001:i:3:p:583-597. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-8456 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.