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This paper reviews and synthesizes the extensive literature that investigates turnover in public accounting firms.

This paper initially identifies turnover studies by searching two commonly used business databases, ABI and Business Source. Subsequently, references in these studies are examined. Over 100 published studies of accounting firms are identified.

Prior turnover studies can be classified by the underlying theory: psychological attachment; role theory; mentoring; and organizational justice. Using these theories, prior research has examined a wide variety of issues such as the role of gender in turnover.

Turnover is a significant and long-term problem in accounting firms. Practitioners and researchers have long noted that firms lose the costs of training employees who leave the firm. Recently, many in the auditing field have recognized that employee turnover may reduce audit quality. This paper summarizes prior turnover research, which may provide guidance to future researchers and managers of accounting firms.

This study fills a void in the accounting literature, which is missing a comprehensive and up to date review of prior studies of turnover in accounting firms. Opportunities for future research are also explored. While much has been learned, some theoretical and methodological issues remain unresolved.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how a combination of Normative Commitment (NC) and Instrumental Commitment (IC) affects the creation of budgetary slack when the decision-making mode is individual versus group.

We use 86 students in a two-by-two experimental design (individuals vs. groups and a combination of NC/IC vs. no NC/IC), fully crossed between participants, to examine the combined effects of NC/IC on budgetary slack creation by individuals and group members.

The results show that groups without NC/IC create the highest budgetary slack and differ from the other three experimental cells (groups with NC/IC and individuals with and without NC/IC). In addition, individuals with NC/IC also differ from individuals without NC/IC.

Research limitations are formation of groups, validity threats common to laboratory experiments, and generalizability of the findings. We do not believe these limitations are affecting the results.

As organizations continue to increase the use of group decision-making for setting their budgets, they may want to monitor groups with low NC/IC due to higher slack creation.

Use of groups can impact prosocial behavior via creating a “label” and/or forming social ties in budgeting.

This study extends budgetary slack creation under individuals versus group decision-making, introduces the combined effects of NC/IC as a psychological contract to the accounting literature, and examines the combined NC/IC effect on groups as compared to individuals.

Female students comprise a significant number of the accounting student population at four-year institutions. Likewise, a significant number of students have chosen to enroll and earn associate degrees at a community college, and subsequently transfer to a four-year college or university. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than half of the students enrolled in two-year institutions were female. Moreover, 57% of college students in the United States are females. This study provides empirical evidence on the interaction between gender and transfer versus native accounting students in their academic performance during and after shock periods. According to the literature, the shock period includes two semesters after a two-year college student transfers to a four-year college. The results of this study indicate that female and male transfer students do not perform equally in their accounting courses compared to their native counterparts, that is, male transfer students in accounting performed worse than female transfer students and native students (male and female) both during and after the “shock” period. These findings may have practical implications for administrators and accounting departments since male transfer students appear to need more assistance to absorb transfer shock when they join four-year colleges and possibly even after their first year at the four-year institution.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of process and product complexity on participative leadership style (i.e. perceptions of the primary decision maker in a resource allocation decision. Data from a descriptive judgment task provide evidence that product and process complexity operate as antecedents to choosing differential participative leadership decision styles. Analysis uses the Vroom Jago model (1988) to show that situations characterized by high (low) process complexity provide an increased (decreased) incentive to employ participative leadership styles. However, situations characterized by high (low) product complexity do not appear to significantly affect choices regarding participative leadership style.

Communication researchers have observed that students will avoid majors that require the use of certain skills where the individual exhibits a high level of apprehension toward those skills. Historically, accounting has been perceived as requiring more math skills and fewer communication skills than other business majors so accounting has typically attracted students with low math apprehension and high communication (written and oral) apprehension. The current study investigates whether business students' perceptions across business majors regarding the level of mathematics, writing, and oral communication skills required for accounting reflect the recent changes in pedagogy and curriculum content for the accounting major.

The results indicate that the perception of skills required to be an accounting major by students in other business majors (more math and less communication) is different from the perception of accounting majors. On the other hand, accounting majors' perceptions of the skills needed to be in an alternative business major is generally similar to students in the respective major. These observations may lead to the interpretation that accounting majors have gotten the word that professional expectations of accountants involve substantial communication skill while that message has apparently not been shared with students who elect to major in other business fields.

This paper analyzes citations from the first 20 volumes of Advances in Management Accounting using Google Scholar in April and May, 2013.

This study assesses the success of the first 20 volumes of Advances in Management Accounting using citation analysis. Four citation metrics are used. The four citation metrics are: (1) total citations since year of publication until April and May, 2013, (2) citations per author since year of publication until April and May, 2013, (3) citations per year since year of publication until April and May, 2013, and (4) citations per author per year since year of publication until April and May, 2013.

The top 20 authors for each citation metric, the top 20 faculties for each citation metric, and the top 20 doctoral programs for each citation metric are determined. Furthermore, the top 20 articles are determined using two citation metrics and the H-index for Advances in Management Accounting is computed.

Potential doctoral students, current doctoral students, “new” Ph.D.s with an interest in management accounting, current management accounting faculty, department chairs, deans, other administrators, journal editors, and journal publishers will find these results informative.