Author
Abstract
Purpose - This study tests a research model for promoting understanding of the responsibility attribution process. Design/methodology/approach - A between-subjects experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings - The results reveal that counterfactual thinking about how a system failure could have been prevented moderates the effect of cause of misstatement on perceived control. Counterfactual thinking about how an audit failure could have been avoided also moderates the effect of perceived control on causal account. Additionally, causal account mediates the effect of perceived control on responsibility judgment of an audit firm. Inclusion of audit firm size and auditor systems competency as control variables in the hypothesis tests and as grouping variables in the invariance tests does not alter the model results. Research limitations/implications - Research can guide the audit profession on development of innovative strategies for detecting fraud to protect the interests of decision-makers. Strategies can also be devised to prompt users to consider relevant factors to enhance their ability to arrive at an accurate assessment of an audit firm’s responsibility for an audit failure. Practical implications - Regulators may need to address whether availability of advanced data analytic tools increases the audit firms’ responsibility for presenting convincing evidence suggesting due diligence in the audit work in the event of an audit failure. Originality/value - This study examines the process variables influencing responsibility judgment of an audit firm. Elicitation of counterfactual thoughts before the participants responded to the questions measuring the process and dependent variables facilitates discernment of the intensity of counterfactual thinking on the variables examined in the research model.
Suggested Citation
Siew H. Chan & Qian Song, 2020.
"Insight into the process of responsibility judgment of an audit failure,"
International Journal of Accounting & Information Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 29(1), pages 67-90, September.
Handle:
RePEc:eme:ijaimp:ijaim-06-2020-0083
DOI: 10.1108/IJAIM-06-2020-0083
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
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:eme:ijaimp:ijaim-06-2020-0083. 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: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.