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Telework is becoming a viable and appealing work option in the accounting profession (Hunton, 2005). Many accounting firms have implemented telework arrangements to provide flexibility and support for employees who seek an acceptable balance between career and family. This form of work also supports business sustainability in the event of acts of terrorism or natural disasters. Increased reliance on various forms of telework gives rise to questions of appropriate ethical treatment of affected workers. The objectives of the present study are to examine the ethical implications of telework and identify policies for telework that might help organizations implement this type of work arrangement for their employees in an ethically informed manner. Our analysis draws upon a framework proposed by Yuthas and Dillard (1999) that combines postmodern ethics with stakeholder theory. Although this framework was developed to study the ethical design of information technology systems, we maintain that this structure is equally useful to study the ethical issues inherent with telework. Legislators, regulators, unions, and employers can use the telework policy considerations presented herein as guidelines as they deliberate, design, and implement ethical telework strategies.

This paper ranks university faculties, accounting doctoral programs, individual behavioral accounting researchers, and the most influential articles based on Google Scholar citations to publications in Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research (AABR). All articles published in AABR in its first 15 volumes are included and four citation metrics are used. The paper identifies the articles, authors, faculties, and doctoral programs that made the greatest contribution to the development of AABR. Such an analysis provides a useful basis for understanding the direction the journal has taken and how it has contributed to the literature (Meyer & Rigsby, 2001). The h-index and m-index for AABR indicates it compares favorably among its peers. Potential doctoral students with an interest in behavioral accounting research, “new” accounting faculty with an interest in behavioral accounting research, current behavioral accounting research faculty, department chairs, deans, and other administrators will find these results informative.

The purpose of this study is to investigate differences between individual and collective budgeting decisions with respect to budgetary slack creation and task performance. While a great deal of research exists in the area of budgeting, to our knowledge, no prior studies have dealt with budget settings in a collective (e.g. small group or cross-functional team) environment. Accordingly, the current study examines differences in slack creation and task performance using a two (decision mode: individual vs. collective decision) by two (incentive contract: slack-inducing vs. truth inducing) between-subjects experimental design. A total of 295 students participated in the experiment (79 individuals and 72 three-person collective units). As expected, individuals and collective decision-makers created significantly more slack under a slack-inducing contract than a truth-inducing contract. Additionally, as anticipated, collective decision-makers created more slack than individuals under a slack-inducing contract. Unexpectedly, however, collective decision-makers created more slack than individuals using a truth-inducing contract. Task performance was significantly different between individuals and collective unit members, such that performance of former exceeded latter, as hypothesized. Finally, preliminary analysis indicated that choice shift occurred in the collective units, such that the units became more cautious in setting budget goals than individuals under both incentive contract conditions.

The purpose of the current study is to examine how employees from different cultures respond to participative budgeting when the budget planning horizon is congruent or incongruent with their cultural time orientation. We conducted a 2×2 quasi-experiment in which cultural time orientation (short term or long term) was measured and budget planning horizon (short term or long term) was manipulated. A total of 164 employees participated in the experiment – 87 from China and 77 from the United States, representing long-term and short-term cultural time orientations, respectively. The results indicate that satisfaction with participative budgeting was greater when cultural time orientation and budget planning horizon were congruent, relative to incongruent. Also, the differential reaction between congruence and incongruence was less extreme for the Chinese participants than the U.S. participants, which is consistent with Confucian thought of “The Doctrine of the Mean.” The results of this study contribute to participative budgeting literature and suggest that managers who operate in different countries should be cognizant of cultural differences when employing participative budgeting processes.

Face-to-face meetings between auditors and clients are becoming increasingly more difficult and expensive to arrange, due in large part to the ceaseless expansion of commerce across the globe. Relying on electronic communication media such as e-mail messaging or video-conferencing for auditor–client inquiry purposes is one way to enhance the timeliness of such communications; however, questions arise with respect to potentially biasing influences of certain technical aspects of electronic media on auditors’ judgment and decision-making processes. Drawing on information processing theories, the current study posits that media and message attributes can interact, thereby differentially affecting auditors’ belief revisions – holding information content constant. The media attributes examined in the current study are cue multiplicity (i.e., the range of central and peripheral cues a medium is capable of transmitting) and message reprocessability (i.e., the extent of archival and retrieval features a medium is capable of handling); and the message attribute studied is evidence strength (e.g., the credibility of client-provided evidence). Research findings from a laboratory experiment with 189 graduate accounting students indicate the following: (1) when client-provided evidence is strong, neither message reprocessability nor cue multiplicity significantly affect the auditors’ belief revisions; (2) when evidence is weak and reprocessability is present, higher cue multiplicity leads to significantly greater belief revision in favor of the client; (3) when evidence is weak and reprocessability is absent, lower cue multiplicity results in significantly greater belief revision in favor of the client. Study results suggest theoretical and practical implications for globally distributed auditor–client communications.

The current study examines the effect of fraud training on auditors' ability to identify fraud risk factors. This is important because most auditors have little or no direct experience with fraud; thus, research that investigates the potential effect of indirect experience through training is vitally important to fraud detection and audit quality. A total of 369 experienced auditors completed a complex audit simulation task that involved 15 seeded fraud risk red flags. A total of 143 auditors participated in a 30-minute training session focused specifically on fraud risk, while the remaining 226 auditors learned about general internal control risk during this time block. The results indicate that auditors with fraud training identified significantly more red flags and obtained greater knowledge about fraud risk than auditors who did not receive the training. Considering that the fraud training consumed only 30 minutes out of a 64-hour training session, the findings suggest that even modest exposure to fraud training is quite effective.

This article reflects on recent dramatic changes that have forever reshaped accounting practice and research. Specifically, the digital revolution, which is still unfolding before our eyes, has changed the very nature of work for accountants and forced researchers and practitioners alike to struggle with a host of new threats and opportunities facing the profession. Accounting behavioral researchers in particular must deal with a wide array of human-to-computer, information processing and decision-making issues that did not exist a mere two decades ago. We academics can put our collective heads in the sand, as some have already chosen to do, or we can view these turbulent times in the global business community as exciting, provoking and enlightening. Herein, I attempt to address many ways in which psychology-based researchers can engage in meaningful studies aimed at raising the accounting profession to a new level of quality and relevance by incorporating the impact of information and communication technologies on human attitude, cognition and performance.

Jost et al. (2003) theorizes and finds that business students, on an average, hold a positive fair market ideology (FMI), which suggests that they believe in the power of market forces to reward ethical corporate behavior and punish unethical behavior; accordingly, they tend to make an implicit association between a company's financial performance relative to the stock market and the company's ethics. We suggest that audit education in professional skepticism and ‘red flag’ analysis will mitigate this implicit bias when a company's relative market performance is unusually distant from a referent benchmark, such as an industry average. In a between-participants experiment involving 94 non-audit and 94 audit business students, we measure their FMI, and examine how they perceive the ethicality of a company's management based on the referent direction (above or below the industry average) and referent magnitude (relatively close to or distant from the industry average) of the company's relative market performance. The results suggest that both non-audit and audit students indeed hold a positive FMI, and they ascribe favorable ethical perceptions to company performance that is relatively close to the industry average, irrespective of referent direction. When company performance is relatively distant from the industry average, neither group of students makes the implicit link. Overall, the findings do not indicate that audit education differentially affects business students’ perceptions of corporate ethics when a company's relative stock market performance deviates considerably from a referent benchmark.

The primary purpose of this study is to examine how and why contingent economic rents can lead to biased audit judgment via a cognitive processing phenomenon known as predecisional distortion of information. The secondary research objective is to develop a more refined measure of predecisional distortion, thereby yielding a more robust and predictive metric. A total of 73 audit partners representing four of the Big Five CPA firms participated in a two (low-balling: present or absent) by two (non-audit revenue: present or absent) between-subjects experiment. Research findings indicate that contingent economic rents can potentially impair audit independence, as such rents heighten an initial desire to maintain a long-term relationship with the client, trigger favorable predecisional distortion of client-related information, and bias audit judgment in favor of the client. Study results also reveal that the refined predecisional distortion metric is more predictive than past measurement techniques. Between-subject and within-subject debriefings suggest that predecisional distortion of information operates, at least partially, at the subconscious level.