Effects of Professional Skepticism, Competency and Workload Compression on the Ability to Detect Possible Fraud among Government Auditors

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of professional scepticism, competence, and workload compression on an auditor's ability to detect potential fraud. This sample consisted of 149 government auditors from the Indonesian Local Government Inspectorate. Data was gathered through the use of a questionnaire and analysed using the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. The findings revealed that internal attribution (professional scepticism and competency) have a significant impact on an auditor's ability to detect the possibility of fraud. Workload compression as an external attribution, did not have a meaningful influence on an auditor's ability to detect probable fraud. Workload reduction was also found to be ineffective in moderating the relationship between internal attribution and an auditor's ability to detect probable fraud. The findings can guide local governments in developing policies aimed at enhancing the role of government auditors in detecting fraud. Keywords: government auditors, professional skepticism, attribution, workload compression

Comprehensive and efficient workload compression

This work studies the problem of constructing a representative workload from a given input analytical query workload where the former serves as an approximation with guarantees of the latter. We discuss our work in the context of workload analysis and monitoring. As an example, evolving system usage patterns in a database system can cause load imbalance and performance regressions which can be controlled by monitoring system usage patterns, i.e., a representative workload, over time. To construct such a workload in a principled manner, we formalize the notions of workload representativity and coverage. These metrics capture the intuition that the distribution of features in a compressed workload should match a target distribution, increasing representativity, and include common queries as well as outliers, increasing coverage. We show that solving this problem optimally is computationally hard and present a novel greedy algorithm that provides approximation guarantees. We compare our techniques to established algorithms in this problem space such as sampling and clustering, and demonstrate advantages and key trade-offs.

CEO ability and regulatory review risk

Purpose Chief executive officer (CEO) ability may have an effect on various corporate reporting decisions, and consequently, the CEO ability is subject to scrutiny by regulatory reviewers. However, theoretical literature provides mixed evidence on how the CEO ability affects the regulatory review risk. Thus, this study aims to empirically examine the effect of CEO ability on regulatory review risk. Design/methodology/approach To measure CEO ability, this study uses the CEO ability-score developed by Demerjian et al. (2012). Further, to measure regulatory review risk, the study uses the probability of receiving a comment letter from the Securities and Exchange Organization of Iran. Findings This study finds that the relationship between CEO ability and regulatory review risk is generally negative and statistically significant but not economically significant, i.e. the relationship is very small. In this regard, the study shows that the relationship is negative and also statistically and economically significant for firms with low levels of agency conflicts and high levels of corporate governance quality; and is positive and also statistically and economically significant for firms with high levels of agency conflicts and low levels of corporate governance quality. In addition, while the study finds no evidence that the regulatory reviewers’ workload compression influences the general relationship between CEO ability and regulatory review risk, it documents that low (high) regulatory reviewers’ workload compression weakens (strengthens) both the relationships stated above. Originality/value Collectively, the results suggest that the agency conflicts/corporate governance quality and regulatory reviewers’ workload compression are important factors in the analysis of the relationship between the CEO ability and regulatory review risk. The results offer insights into the opposing theoretical viewpoints about the relationship between CEO ability and regulatory review risk. Thus, the results will be of interest to boards of directors and other stakeholders involved in the regulatory review process.

The Effect of Workload Compression on Audit Quality

SUMMARY This study investigates whether workload pressures, as proxied by the audit busy season (i.e., December fiscal year-end date) and auditor workload compression (i.e., relative concentration of companies with the same fiscal year-end date in an auditor's client portfolio), affect audit quality. Using a sample of 8,384 firm-year observations during the period 2006–2009, we find that busy season companies exhibit greater magnitudes of abnormal accruals and are more likely to meet or beat certain earnings benchmarks. Additional tests show that these associations are enhanced by the degree of auditor workload compression. Prior experimental and survey research indicates that workload pressures lead to dysfunctional behaviors and lower audit quality among individual auditors. Our archival findings suggest that these pressures can transcend the quality control mechanisms of a firm, affecting quality at the audit engagement level.

Auditor Workload Compression and Busy Season Auditor Switching

SYNOPSIS This study investigates the impact of the busy season and concomitant concentrated demands on audit resources on the likelihood of auditor switching. Hereafter, we refer to the concentration of companies with the same fiscal year-end date within an auditor's client portfolio as “workload compression.” Despite the economic significance of December year-end clients for audit firms and the challenges imposed by workload compression, the busy season remains a relatively unexplored area of study in the archival auditing literature (Sweeney and Summers 2002). This study represents an attempt to fill this void and validate some of the findings of prior behavioral studies from an empirical perspective. We employ a sample of 10,238 company-year observations for years 2004 through 2007 and find evidence consistent with December year-end companies having a lower likelihood of auditor switching than that of non-December year-end companies. However, we also find evidence of a significantly positive association between the likelihood of auditor switching and workload compression. Thus, our results suggest that it is not just the fiscal year-end month of a client that matters, but the concentration of busy season companies within an auditor's client portfolio also affects the auditor-client relationship. Data Availability: Data are available from public sources identified in the paper.

Reducing Stress from Workload Compression: Coping Strategies That Work in CPA Firms

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;CG Times&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Workload compression is characterized by the AICPA (Padwe 1994) as a condition of excessive job demands caused by the 1986 Tax Reform Act (TRA).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The TRA severely limited the ability of businesses to elect other than a calendar year-end reporting for tax purposes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Consequently, professional accountants find their tax and audit work compressed into the first quarter of each year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In an earlier study Cluskey and Vaux (1997a) found job stressors, such as excessive job demands, to be contributing factors in causing job stress, which ultimately leads to degraded job performance. Cluskey and Vaux (1997b) also found workload compression to be a possible contributor to occupational stress in professional accountants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The current study surveyed public accountants in both October (slack season) and February (busy season).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The study found that standard indicators of job stress were no greater in February than in October, indicating that workload compression does not contribute additional occupational stress in accounting practitioners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Subsequent interviews with the participants revealed that the firms in this study have incorporated specific management practices to help their employees cope with the extremely high job demands during this period of workload compression, which may help explain these unexpected results.</span></span></p>