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Independence is the cornerstone of the auditing profession. Even so, it is often assumed that acquiescing to the audit client when a disagreement occurs is more beneficial to the auditor-client relationship than asserting one’s independence (e.g., see Wang & Tuttle, 2009). We look more closely at the issue in the context of auditor-client management disagreements as recalled by experienced auditors.

We find that for most disagreements in which the auditor did not make any concession at all, the auditor-client relationship was either unaffected or strengthened. We find that a client’s use of pressure tactics did not appear to influence whether or not the auditor made a concession, but that a client’s use of pressure tactics, was associated with damage to the auditor-client relationship. The importance of the issue causing a disagreement was positively associated with the likelihood of the auditor staying with his/her initial position.

During team meetings, expressing negativity about other team members’ ideas and contributions – that is, negative disagreements – can derail team processes and harm team productivity. If team members want to improve their meetings and reduce negativity, which aspects are relevant starting points? This chapter discusses the complexity of this question by considering the interplay of team attributes, individual characteristics, and verbal interaction dynamics that may evoke negative disagreements in meetings. To this end, this chapter relies on existing behavioral and survey data of 259 employees nested in 43 team meetings that were analyzed using statistical discourse analysis. The results of this analysis highlight several potential starting points for reducing negativity in workplace meetings. First, we discovered that team attributes matter, as teams with a lower overall level of job satisfaction were more likely to experience negative disagreements during their meetings. Second, at the individual level, we found a significant gender effect such that women were more likely than men to start negative disagreements. Third, individual team members reporting lower organizational trust were more likely to start negative disagreements. Finally, counter to previous work on interaction dynamics during meetings, we could not identify specific verbal behaviors that triggered negative disagreements. In terms of practical implications, we discuss how managers can increase organizational trust and job satisfaction (e.g., through ensuring justice and improving job design) in order to encourage more positive meeting interactions.

We develop a theoretical model to compare forecast uncertainty estimated from time-series models to those available from survey density forecasts. The sum of the average variance of individual densities and the disagreement is shown to approximate the predictive uncertainty from well-specified time-series models when the variance of the aggregate shocks is relatively small compared to that of the idiosyncratic shocks. Due to grouping error problems and compositional heterogeneity in the panel, individual densities are used to estimate aggregate forecast uncertainty. During periods of regime change and structural break, ARCH estimates tend to diverge from survey measures.

The objective of this research study is to investigate the impact of auditor dismissals and resignations on commercial lending decisions. The study also examines whether a reason given for a dismissal or resignation affects commercial lending decisions. Eighty-five commercial loan officers were given a scenario involving a hypothetical company loan applicant and were first asked to assess the level of risk associated with granting a line of credit. Next, they were asked to assess the probability that they would grant the line of credit. Five different questionnaire versions were created by varying information about an auditor change and the reason for the change. The study finds that risk assessments of and the probability of granting credit to the applicant company do not significantly differ due to knowledge about auditor changes. In addition, participants did not view auditor resignations differently than auditor dismissals. Finally, disclosure of a disagreement as a reason for an auditor change did not have an impact on lending decisions.

Purpose – This study examined the impact of educational differences between married women and men on marital quality at the intersections of gender, race, and class.Methodology/approach – Guided by an intersectional perspective we analyzed data for 4,835 black and white married couples from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH; 1987–1988). Dyadic multigroup models were estimated using structural equation modeling to examine how status differences affected four latent dimensions of marital quality: happiness, stability, perceived fairness, and disagreement.Findings – Our findings highlight how multiple dimensions of marital quality vary according to intersections of gender, race, and class, and reveal how these intersections moderate the impact of status on marital quality.Research limitations/implications – To our knowledge, the NSFH is the most up-to-date, nationally representative dataset available with couple-level data; however, the data were collected in the late 1980s and are insufficient for extending our analysis to other race-ethnic groups. Our findings demonstrate a strong need for more comprehensive contemporary data collection that has adequate numbers of respondents/couples at the intersections of gender, race, and class to facilitate further quantitative studies using an intersectional perspective.Originality/value – Our study is innovative in using education, an arena where women are currently outpacing men, as an indicator of status, and in embracing an intersectional perspective. By doing so we advance literature on status discrepant marriages, and contribute to the fields of gender and family studies which seek to understand how the changing roles of women may be affecting marital quality.

During the transition to parenthood, the gender division of paid and unpaid work undergoes a profound redefinition in response to both attitudes and resources. These attitudes may be concordant or discordant between two partners, they may or may not clash with perceived financial or labour market constraints, and they may or may not provoke explicit conflicts and negotiations. In this study, by combining quantitative and qualitative data, we focus on Italian couples with young children or in transition to first child, and we explore what happens when partners have discordant views. The findings show that the division of domestic and care work seems more resistant to change and more responsive to the husband’s attitudes than does the division of paid work, as the latter is mainly driven by the woman’s education and attitudes. The findings also show that very few couples overtly disagree. If they do so, the main issue in dispute is the allocation of domestic work and the main solution consists more in hiring external help than in obtaining the husband’s greater participation. Compared with domestic work, the allocation of care is a less disputed and more flexible issue: when women start negotiations on a more equal sharing, men are more willing to increase their participation. However, when a more equal sharing is not attained, couples’ narratives tend to give the “cause” to the constraints of the man (typically his work) than of the woman, while they point at a redefinition (for the best of the family) of her rather than his preferences.

Purpose – Negotiations can be stressful, yet are unavoidable in many organizations. Members of organizational workgroups for instance need to negotiate about issues such as task division and different ideas on how to complete a project. Until recently little research effort has been directed to understanding negotiators' stress responses. Similarly, little is known about the consequences that these stress responses may have on negotiation outcomes. In this chapter we argue that group members' physiological stress responses are a key determinant of the outcomes of intragroup negotiations.

Design/Methodology/Approach – We focus on two distinct physiological responses (i.e., threat and challenge) and argue that relative to threat responses, challenge responses will be related to superior information sharing, information processing, and decision-making quality. Moving beyond a uniform relationship between physiological reactions and negotiators' behaviors and outcomes, we also focus on two moderating characteristics: the relative power of group members, and whether the negotiation is purely task related, or co-occurs with relationship issues. We discuss effects on both the individual and the group level, extend our ideas to other forms of negotiations, and end with practical and theoretical implications.

Originality/Value – A better understanding of psychophysiological processes during intragroup negotiations may help to explain when intragroup disagreements help or hinder group outcomes and, therefore, may help to solve the paradox of intragroup conflict.

From the standpoint of a policy maker who has access to a number of expert forecasts, the uncertainty of a combined or ensemble forecast should be interpreted as that of a typical forecaster randomly drawn from the pool. This uncertainty formula should incorporate forecaster discord, as justified by (i) disagreement as a component of combined forecast uncertainty, (ii) the model averaging literature, and (iii) central banks’ communication of uncertainty via fan charts. Using new statistics to test for the homogeneity of idiosyncratic errors under the joint limits with both T and n approaching infinity simultaneously, the authors find that some previously used measures can significantly underestimate the conceptually correct benchmark forecast uncertainty.

Increased life expectancies and decreased birthrates have placed enormous financial pressure on the Social Security system. Because significant reforms are needed to ensure its financial solvency, our study examines the acceptability of proposals to reform the system. Given the potentially divergent views suggested by prior research, we selected participants from the following four groups (1) younger black taxpayers, (2) younger white taxpayers, (3) older black taxpayers, and (4) older white taxpayers. While there was agreement among the groups on several of the proposals, in general, the differences between the generations were more pronounced than the differences between the racial groups.

Purpose – To motivate diversity researchers to reconsider prior findings that use homogeneity as the standard to which diverse teams are compared. To recognize that homogeneity may be just as (if not more) influential than diversity in shaping group processes.

Design/approach – We selectively review the diversity literature and develop a conceptual reinterpretation of prior research. We challenge the general orientation in the literature to treat homogeneity as a baseline to which the effects of diversity are compared. We develop propositions that use diversity as the baseline for homogeneity and provide directions for future research.

Findings – We redigest evidence relating to five core areas in which researchers have identified differences between diverse and homogeneous groups, indicating that homogeneity may lead to (1) an avoidance of disagreement, (2) less use of unique information, (3) overconfidence about performance, (4) more social focus, and (5) less sensitivity to relationship conflict than might be warranted. Based on this reinterpretation of prior literature, we propose that homogeneous teams are prone to delusions, assuming they share similar values, opinions, knowledge, and preferences that make their world seem more homogeneous and comfortable than it may actually be.

Originality/value – We attempt to spur greater understanding of how diversity and homogeneity affect group functioning. We stress the independent effects of homogeneity in shaping group outcomes, an underexplored perspective in the diversity literature.