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The role of big data and data analytics in the audit engagement process is evident. Notwithstanding, understanding how big data influences cognitive processes and, consequently, on the auditors’ judgment decision-making process is limited. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework on the cognitive process that may influence auditors’ judgment decision-making in the big data environment. The proposed framework predicts the relationships among data visualization integration, data processing modes, task complexity and auditors’ judgment decision-making.

The methodology to accomplish the conceptual framework is based on a thorough literature review that consists of theoretical discussions and comparative studies of other authors’ works and thinking. It also involves summarizing and interpreting previous contributions subjectively and narratively and extending the work in some fashion. Based on this approach, this paper formulates four propositions about data visualization integration, data processing modes, task complexity and auditors’ judgment decision-making. The proposed framework was built from cognitive theory addressing how auditors process data into useful information to make judgment decision-making.

The proposed framework expects that the cognitive process of data visualization integration and intuitive data processing mode will improve auditors’ judgment decision-making. This paper also contends that task complexity may influence the cognitive process of data visualization integration and processing modes because of the voluminous nature of data and the complexity of business processes. Hence, it is also expected that the relationships between data visualization integration and audit judgment decision-making and between processing mode and audit judgment decision-making will be moderated by task complexity.

There is a dearth of studies examining how big data and big data analytics affect auditors’ cognitive processes in making decisions. This paper will help researchers and auditors understand the behavioral consequences of data visualization integration and data processing mode in making judgment decision-making, given a certain level of task complexity.

With the advent of big data and the evolution of innovative audit procedures, the constructed framework can be used as a theoretical foundation for future empirical studies concerning auditors’ judgment decision-making. It highlights the potential of big data to transform the nature and practice of accounting and auditing.

Heuristics are used in the judgment and decision-making process of bank employees; however, discussions and research on the type or range of judgmental heuristics are very difficult to find throughout the world. In light of this, the purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze what types of heuristics are used in bank employees’ judgment and decision-making processes and the extent to which those types of heuristics prevent rational decision making due to the systematic biases they generate. In particular, this study aims to conduct empirical research based on various scenarios related to the banking industry.

To examine the heuristics in decision-making circumstances and the level of subsequent biases, the present study narrowed the scope of research to the three main types of heuristics introduced by Tversky and Kahneman (1974), namely, representativeness heuristics, availability heuristics and anchoring and adjustment heuristics. To analyze the bank employees’ decision making, this study specifically investigated the level of decision-making heuristics and the level of bias by focusing on these three types of heuristics. This study targeted bank employees who either sell financial products or are engaged in customer service work at a real/physical bank.

For representativeness heuristics, this study found bank employees’ judgment of probability was influenced by biases, such as insensitivity to prior probability, insensitivity to sample size, misconception of chance and insensitivity to predictability. Regarding availability heuristics, it found that bank employees judge the probability of events based on the ease of recalling an event instead of the actual frequency of the event, and so they fall prey to systematic biases. Finally, regarding anchoring and adjustment heuristics, this study found that employees fall prey to judgment biases as they judge the probability of conjunctive events and disjunctive events based on anchoring and insufficient adjustment.

Although people who are well-trained in statistics can avoid rudimentary errors, they fall prey to biased judgment at a similar level to those who are not properly trained in statistics when it comes to more complicated and ambiguous issues. It clearly indicates that it is risky to determine that financial experts would be more rational than the general public in making various judgments required in the policy-making process. To conclude, it is imperative to recognize the existence of heuristics-based systematic biases in the judgment and decision-making process and, furthermore, to reinforce the education and training system to improve bank employees’ rational choice and judgment ability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of transparency on consumers' judgment and decision-making.

This study uses an experimental research design in which participants' negative emotions dynamically change driven by group emotional interactions when they are experiencing a group complaint.

The experimental results show that compared with opaque products, transparent products make consumers rely more on emotions to make judgments and decisions (Experiment 1). It is precise because transparency increases the influence of emotion on consumers' judgment and decision-making that positive emotion makes consumers' evaluation and willingness to pay higher, while negative emotion makes consumers' evaluation and willingness to pay lower (Experiments 2 and 3). Transparency will also affect consumers' subsequent judgment and decision-making methods, so they are more inclined to choose the option with the dominant emotional dimension (Experiment 4).

Previous studies mainly focus on the impact of transparent packaging on consumers and discuss the impact of transparent packaging on consumer product evaluation and consumption quantity. This study proves that product-related transparent elements can also affect consumers' decision-making methods, making them more dependent on emotions to make decisions, enriching the research on the influencing factors of consumer decision-making methods.

Wisdom is considered as crucial in decision-making in both management and auditing practice. This research aims to investigate the concept of wisdom in auditing, thereby empirically exploring the determinants of wisdom in audit decision-making and explaining inter-relations among these determinants.

This study employs grounded theory methodology that is based on in-depth interviews with twenty-seven practicing auditors who are audit partners, managers, seniors and assistants of auditing firms. Guided by the grounded theory, data collection and data analyses were conducted simultaneously to look into the new insights of the research phenomenon. The coding process was constantly compared until the research's theoretical saturation is reached after four rounds. At the end of the research process, the study conducted a survey to confirm the proposed framework as well as examine the inter-relationships between the defined determinants.

Results suggest developing a conceptual framework to interpret wisdom-based decision-making process in auditing. A wise process of audit decision-making is defined as an integrated exercise of multiple determinants including knowledge assimilation, judgmental ability and ethical orientation. The research also explains and examines the potential interrelationships among these determinants in the audit decision-making process.

Wisdom is a valuable tacit ability for all external auditors. The development of wise decision-making abilities of auditors should be considered an integral part of multiple virtues including knowledge and judgmental and ethical aspects.

The contributions of this study are original and significant because it proposes a new approach to explain for the audit decision-making process and enhances better understandings of the concept of wisdom in auditing practices and its roles in audit decision-making.

The paper seeks to evaluate the prescriptive value of ethical decision‐making models.

The paper explores various types of models in the ethics literature in concert with knowledge from the decision sciences literature to develop a tentative list of evaluative criteria that might be applied to prescriptive models. It then applies these criteria to one prescriptive model from the ethics literature, developed by Petrick and Quinn, in an attempt to demonstrate the value of more comprehensive evaluation. It closes by considering future research aimed at the evaluation of ethical decision‐making models as well as research needed to validate the Petrick and Quinn model.

This critique finds that the Petrick‐Quinn judgment integrity model satisfies most of the criteria discussed in the ethical decision‐making literature. The primary opportunities for refining the Petrick‐Quinn model as a prescriptive framework for ethical decision making are: articulating the operational judgment component of the model as a formal, quantitative decision analysis, and conducting research to assess the real‐world utility of the model.

While there has been a proliferation of research concerning business ethics, little attention has been focused on evaluating the utility of ethical decision‐making models. Accordingly, this paper advances theory, research and practice regarding ethical decision making in organizations.

The monographs and reviews on audit judgment and decision-making research published over the years have strengthened this strand of research in auditing by providing insights and suggesting avenues for future research. However, no such comprehensive reviews have been published so far for the research undertaken in the domain of accounting judgment. This chapter reviews the accounting judgment and decision-making research published during 1972–2010 in the five top-tier accounting journals. It evaluates the characteristics and significance of these studies, their theoretical and methodological strengths and weaknesses, and suggests avenues for future research. The insights into accounting judgment and decision-making research provided in this chapter may be useful for improving the research method, theory development, and hypotheses' formulation stages of future studies. The analysis presented in this chapter may also provide the necessary impetus to strengthen this strand of research in accounting in the future.

An ongoing debate in the field of organizational decision-making concerns the use of intuition versus analytical rationality in decision-making. For the purpose of contributing to this debate we use a rich empirical dataset built from a longitudinal study of information technology project prioritization in a large financial institution to investigate how managers make space for the use of intuition in decision-making. Our findings show that during project prioritization meetings, senior decision makers apply three different techniques: bringing-in project intangibles, co-promoting intuitive judgments, and associating intuitive judgments with shared group context, when they make space for intuition in decision processes.

This paper aims to examine complex clinical decision‐making processes in trauma center units of hospitals in terms of the immediate impact of complexity on the medical team involved in the trauma event.

It is proposed to develop a model of decision‐making processes in trauma events that uses a Bayesian classifier model with convolution and deconvolution operators to study real‐time observed trauma data for the decision‐making process under tremendous stress. The objective is to explore and explain physicians' decision‐making processes under stress and time constraints during actual trauma events from the perspective of complexity.

Because physicians have blurred information and cues that are tainted by random environmental noise during injury‐related events, they must de‐blur (de‐convolute) the collected data to find a best approximation of the real data for decision‐making processes.

The data collection and analysis is innovative and the permission to access raw audio and video data from an active trauma center will differentiate this study from similar studies that rely on simulations, self report and case study approaches.

Clinical decision makers in trauma centers are placed in situations that are increasingly complex, making decision‐making and problem‐solving processes multifaceted.

The science of complex adaptive systems, together with human judgment theories, provide important concepts and tools for responding to the challenges of healthcare this century and beyond.

Humans tend to rely on beliefs, assumptions and cognitive rules‐of‐thumb for making judgments and are biased against taking more uncertain alternatives. Such inertia has implications for client organizations' decision making about innovations, which are inherently more uncertain than conventional alternatives. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to furthering the understanding of barriers to overcoming inertia in client decision making in new‐build.

A descriptive behavioural decision‐making perspective is combined with an organizational information‐processing perspective. To identify and discuss individual and organizational barriers that potentially distort clients' decision making on innovation, the analysis addresses aggregated data from four studies. The analysis focuses on inferences and interpretations made by decision makers in Swedish client organizations, their information‐processing practices and the subsequent impacts on perceived meanings and judgments about industrialized multi‐storey, timber‐framed building innovations, which are perceived by Swedish clients as new and different building alternatives.

Cognitive and organizational barriers maintain status‐quo decisions. Clients are inclined to make biased judgments about industrialized‐building alternatives because non‐applicable cognitive rules‐of‐thumb, based on their experiences of conventional‐building alternatives, are used. Furthermore, client organizations' information‐processing practices do not allow different meanings to surface, interact and potentially suggest different conclusions, at odds with established beliefs.

The paper's conclusions highlight how inertia is sustained in client decision making in new‐build. They illustrate the limitations of a common engineering approach, i.e. supporting decision making about innovations by focusing on providing more information to the decision maker in order to reduce uncertainty, as well as managing multiple meanings by reductionism.

This paper aims to examine the influence of ethical judgement on decision-making behaviour related to ethical issues of Islamic banking practitioners in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The study adopted a confirmatory approach in which validated/established “normative ethical standards” are taken into the consideration as theoretical underpinning. In total, 262 samples are collected from Islamic banking practitioners in the UAE and data analysis is conducted using structural equation modelling.

The empirical findings indicate that the decision-making behaviour related to ethical issues of Islamic banking practitioners in UAE does not adhere to any set of normative ethical standards and respondents are pragmatic in nature when it comes to the decision-making behaviour related to ethical matters.

The study elucidates to what extent Islamic banking practitioners have encountered themselves with situations that demand the proper attention to the ethical aspects, which affecting decision-making behaviour related to ethical issues. According to the findings, those situations considerably demand the attention of ethical judgement in the decision-making behaviour of Islamic banking practitioners. Hence, it is recommended for Islamic banks in UAE to contain or intensify the training on the importance of ethics, Islamic thought and worldview to enhance corporate decision-making and banking profitability within the purview of Islamic principles.

While ample emphasis has been given to the juristic (fiqh) aspects of Sharīʿah-compliant in Islamic banking and finance, relatively little has been attempted to explore its ethical dimensions (akhlaq) in the compliance parameters. Further, Sharīʿah-compliant has been product-centric rather than people-centric. While there is numerous literature documented that links ethics and Islamic banking and finance, ethical framework and practice in Islamic finance institutions, studies focusing on the “people” and their “ethical decision-making behaviour” in Islamic financial institutions found missing in the literature. These gaps serve as justification for undertaking this research.