Does gender and ethnic diversity among audit partners influence office-level audit personnel retention and audit quality?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Condie, Eric R.; Lisic, Ling Lei; Seidel, Timothy A.; Truelson, Jonathan Michael; Zimmerman, Aleksandra B.
• 署名单位: University System of Georgia; Georgia Institute of Technology; Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University; Brigham Young University; Mississippi State University; State University System of Florida; Florida State University
• 刊物名称: CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0823-9150
• DOI: 10.1111/1911-3846.12882
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 2477-2511
• 关键词: ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT; job-satisfaction; social identity; RELATIONAL DEMOGRAPHY; climate perceptions; self-categorization; identification; performance; leadership; selection

摘要

Motivated by prior literature on organizational identification and 23 semistructured interviews with a variety of US audit partners and directors, we examine whether the gender and ethnic diversity of an office's audit partners influences the retention of the office's audit professionals and the quality of the audits conducted by the office. Using hand-collected data on US audit partners, we find that greater levels of (or changes in) diversity in office audit partners' gender and ethnicity are associated with lower (reduced) turnover among office audit professionals and higher (increased) office-level audit quality. We conduct a path analysis based on the most common mechanisms highlighted in our interviews to provide further insight into the audit quality results. The results indicate partial mediation through increased retention, greater gender and ethnic diversity among office audit personnel, client continuity, and increased efficiency. Further tests reveal that the association with audit quality is incremental to, and distinct from, the effect of individual engagement partner characteristics and does not reflect client screening. The findings underscore the importance of gender and ethnic diversity among office audit partners to organizational outcomes and provide important practical implications for audit firms.