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This study investigates whether personality traits affect graduate business students’ decisions to start their career (a) in the accounting profession, and (b) at a Big 4 accounting firm. We analyze survey data from 348 graduate students. Results show that students with lower levels of openness to experience are more likely to seek careers in accounting. Further, results show that students with higher levels of narcissism are more likely to start their careers in a Big 4 firm. Additionally, we show that the effect of narcissism on students’ decision to seek career at a Big 4 is fully mediated by their attitudes towards the Big 4. Compared to students who seek careers at non-Big 4 firms, Big 4 career seekers believe that the Big 4 offer higher salaries, better opportunities for training, experience, and networking, more advancement opportunities, better career prospects, more interesting, challenging, and fulfilling work, more friendly colleagues, a better relationship with supervisors, more job security, and higher prestige.

Despite much progress over the past decades, large gender inequalities persist. In this article, I argue that we need a better understanding of social norms to understand persisting gender inequalities and to achieve further gender equality. Many social norms are gender norms: informal rules that specify what is acceptable and what is not in a group basedupongendered distinctions (e.g. female vs male). I discuss different mechanisms through which existing norms can change: the provision of information to correct misperceptions, legal reforms and policy changes, and norm transgression. I illustrate how changing norms could increase gender equality by discussing examples related to important gender norms around paid labour, caregiving, and parenthood.

In this study, I investigate whether the economic bond between an individual audit engagement partner and a client threatens auditor independence (and thus audit quality). As the propensity of the ...

Prior research finds that women receive lower salaries than men. Similarly, we show that female audit partners in Belgium receive significantly lower compensation than male partners. However, there are alternative explanations for the pay gap other than gender discrimination. For example, the gap in compensation could reflect that men are paid more because they have higher levels of productivity. We provide new predictions and tests of gender discrimination by comparing the fees generated by audit partners (a measure of partner productivity) and the types of clients assigned to partners. Consistent with our prediction of female partners having to meet higher performance thresholds than male partners, we show that female partners generate larger fee premiums, but they are less likely to be assigned to prestigious clients. To test whether these patterns are attributable to gender discrimination, we examine whether the results are stronger in male‐dominated offices because this is where we would expect to find the most discrimination against women. We find the fee premiums generated by female partners are larger in male‐dominated offices, while the negative association between prestigious clients and female partners is stronger in male‐dominated offices. Collectively, our combined predictions and tests are consistent with female partners facing gender discrimination in audit offices that are dominated by male partners.

Al-Shaer and Harakehn (2020) and Lopatta et al. (2020) study different aspects of the relationship between board gender diversity and corporate outcomes, respectively executive compensation and non-financial performance. In this discussion, we offer a broad overview of the main results of both studies, provide some points of discussion in relationship to these specific studies, and elaborate on a number of additional points that link the current studies to the broader literature on board gender diversity and gender research in accounting more generally. We conclude with some suggestions for future research.

Auditing standards emphasize that fraud detection is an important objective of an audit and require the exercise of professional skepticism (PS) and a discussion among the engagement team to prevent and detect fraud. The purpose of this study is to examine whether professional skepticism is a driver of fraud brainstorming quality. We investigate the relationship between fraud brainstorming quality, using the measure of Brazel et al. (2010), and auditor’s professional skepticism traits. Using proprietary data from Dutch audit firms on 125 engagements, we find that neutral trait skepticism and professional moral courage of the partner have a significant effect on fraud brainstorming quality. We observe a higher attendance rate and contribution of specialists, more extensive discussion, longer preparation, and longer sessions for engagements led by partners with high neutral trait skepticism and high moral courage. We find no significant results for partners with a high presumptive doubt trait. Additional cross-sectional analyses show that the effect of professional skepticism on FBQ depends on situational, organizational conditions.

In this paper, we assess the existing archival research on audit partners and provide recommendations for future research. Our empirical analyses suggest that the audit partner characteristics with the biggest impact are industry specialisation and client importance. We demonstrate that audit partner studies may suffer from omitted variable bias if they study audit partner characteristics in isolation, as they have often done. We also show that, for most audit partner characteristics, there is little within-company and within-partner variation. We therefore caution against routinely including company and audit partner fixed effects in audit partner studies. We also examine the importance of properly adjusting for dependence in the data in audit partner studies and suggest to cluster standard errors at the client firm level. Finally, we provide detailed descriptive information at the audit partner level in order to demonstrate how researchers could improve the reporting of audit partner level data.

We integrate existing conceptual models of auditors’ professional skepticism with the Theory of Planned Behavior to develop an empirically testable model that explains the processes underlying the association between trait skepticism and skeptical actions. We use data from a sample of 663 auditors across all ranks who each completed an experiential questionnaire. The results reveal that partners and managers are more skeptical than seniors and staff and that individual differences and personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, narcissism, and psychopathy) are associated with differential levels of trait skepticism. In empirical tests of our conceptual model, we find that trait skepticism is positively associated with attitudes, subjective norms (i.e., social pressure to behave skeptically), and perceived behavioral control over skepticism (i.e., self-efficacy), which in turn affect intentions to act skeptically. Subjective norms are the strongest predictor of intentions. Attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control are positively associated with skeptical actions (in terms of evidence collection and evaluation), and intentions to act skeptically positively mediate these associations. Results of testing the associations in our conceptual model do not differ by rank, revealing that antecedents to skeptical action do not differ based upon auditor experience.

Becoming friends on Facebook does not always guarantee long-term friendships as users have the possibility to unfriend people. This unfriending behaviour is frequently occurring and might have negative consequences for both parties. To gain insight into the factors influencing adolescents unfriending, the current study made use of an extended version of the theory of planned behaviour. To enrich the theoretical framework, we included antecedents related to adolescents friendship management on Facebook, namely their number of friends, their friendship acceptance threshold, and their degree of public communication. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1.117 adolescents. SEM analyses indicated that both subjective norm and attitude were related to behavioural intention, which in turn was related to adolescents unfriending behaviour. Perceived behavioural control was only associated with adolescents unfriending behaviour. Regarding the additional factors, the size of adolescents friend network was positively related to their confidence in the ability to unfriend people. Adolescents friendship acceptance threshold was negatively related to their attitude, whereas adolescents degree of public communication was positively associated with their perceived behavioural control and the experienced social pressure to unfriend.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the corpus of gender research in accounting journals, with the overall aim of evaluating the extent to which it has contributed to the understanding of the organization of accounting and its social and organizational functions. Design/methodology/approach Gender articles have been critically analyzed. The selection included all gender papers published between the years 2000 and 2014, in 58 journals ranked A*, A and B from the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) journal ranking list. Patterns within the publishing norms of those journals were identified and critically reflected upon. Findings Gender research has been grouped into three categories, namely, gender as a dummy (or control) variable, gender as giving voice and gender as a process and organizing principle. Of these three categories, it can be contended that using gender as a dummy variable is very common, and it proved to be the least fruitful in explicating the roles of gender in accounting. Moreover, many published papers confuse sex with gender. Research limitations/implications This paper discusses future avenues and approaches for research gender in accounting without, however, expanding on recent changes in gender research. Originality/value This paper is the first to systematically review gender research in the accounting field over the past three decades. Its key insight is to identify two persistent pitfalls within the current gender research practice, namely, the use of gender as a control variable only and the confusion of sex with gender. These pitfalls diminish the value of gender research overall and render it less relevant to the broader accounting literature. By using the term gender either as an add-on or, mistakenly, as a biological rather than cultural marker, the totality of those articles helps marginalize gender as an accounting research area because they fail to bring about the reconceptualization of accounting as a discipline. This stands in marked contrast to the achievements of gender approaches in other disciplines, such as sociology, history or work and employment. Articles that frequently decry the status of gender in accounting research turn out to be also reinforcing the marginalization of gender in accounting.

It is common nowadays for parents to share information about their children on social network sites (SNSs). However, little is known on how adolescents think and feel about this sharenting behavior. Therefore, this study explores adolescents' perception of the reasons why parents share information about their adolescent children on SNSs, and adolescents' attitudes toward sharenting. A survey study was conducted among 817 adolescents. Factor analyses pointed toward four perceived sharenting motives: parental advice motives, social motives, impression management motives, and informative-archiving motives. Adolescents believed that parents mainly shared information about their children due to informative-archiving motives. They believed that parental advice motives were less common. Preliminary analyses pointed out that adolescents largely disapproved of sharenting. They mainly considered it as embarrassing and useless. Regression analysis indicated that when adolescents perceived sharenting as an impression management issue, the more negative their attitudes were toward sharenting. Conversely, the more adolescents thought that parents shared information about their children due to informative-archiving motives, the less they disapproved of sharenting. Additionally, when adolescents themselves disclosed more personal information or when they were more often confronted with sharenting, they had more positive attitudes toward sharenting. Adolescents who were more concerned about their online privacy, were more likely to disapprove of sharenting.

Audit firms can shape and foster the desired behavior of their partners in accordance with the firm's strategy and objectives through compensation schemes. Understanding financial incentives is therefore of great importance, especially to ensure that auditors actually deliver high quality work. This study analyzes the elements associated with the compensation of audit partners in Belgium, and specifically contributes to the literature by investigating how compensation schemes vary across firms of different sizes (Big 4, second-tier, and small audit firms). Our results indicate that the mixture of equal sharing and performance based compensation elements varies across firms of different sizes. Partner compensation in larger (Big 4 and second-tier) firms is more heavily based on performance based elements than in smaller audit firms. Furthermore, in firms of all sizes compensation appears to be strongly associated with commercially oriented elements while professionally oriented elements only play a minor role. Professionally oriented elements are, however, slightly more important in larger (Big 4 and second-tier) firms than in smaller firms.

This paper examines the relation between the stringency of entrance requirements to the audit profession within the EU and audit quality. Regulators and standard setters generally believe that such entrance requirements have beneficial effects by increasing audit quality. Whether this is indeed the case, however, is an empirical question given that regulations governing the entry to the audit profession are not the product of competitive market forces. We argue that a higher educational degree and longer traineeship period will result in higher audit quality. We also hypothesize that a professional oath will be positively associated with audit quality. Based on a sample of 3,782 firms from 20 different EU member states, we assess the relation between these requirements and abnormal working capital accruals. Our findings indicate that the requirement of a master's degree compared with a bachelor's degree is significantly associated with better accruals quality of audited financial statements. Second, we find that abnormal working capital accruals are lower in countries that require a traineeship period of at least 3 years. Finally, we find mixed evidence for the effect of a professional oath as part of the entrance requirements on audit quality.

SYNOPSIS The accuracy of audit reports is often viewed as a signal for audit quality. Prior research shows that in the context of going-concern reporting in audit markets dominated by public firms, some auditors are more accurate than others (e.g., Big N firms). This study is the first large-scale study that investigates going-concern reporting accuracy in an audit market dominated by private firms. The threat of reputation and litigation costs incentivizes auditors to report accurately in markets dominated by public firms, but such incentives are largely absent in markets dominated by private firms. Hence, reporting accuracy in such markets might not vary across auditors. Our main analysis is based on a sample of 1,375 Belgian firms that ceased to exist within one year from the financial statement date. Our results show that the frequency of Type II misclassification does not vary across auditor types (Big 4 versus non-Big 4, audit firm and partner industry specialists versus non-specialists, more experienced versus less experienced, and female versus male auditors). Overall, these results cast doubt on the existence of quality differences among auditors in audit markets dominated by private firms.

Social network sites (SNSs) provide adolescents with the opportunity to expand their social circle, which is associated with increased social capital. However, the social capital adolescents built depends on the quality of their friendships on SNSs. As no instruments are available to capture the quality of friendships on SNSs, this study designed and validated the Friendship Quality on Social Network Sites questionnaire (FQSNS-questionnaire). The questionnaire consists of five dimensions: satisfaction, companionship, help, intimacy, and self-validation. Explorative and confirmative factor analyses were applied on data of 1.695 friendships (i.e., offline-to-online, online-to-offline, and online friendships) gathered from 1.087 adolescents. Results pointed to a five-factor solution, applicable to any kind of friendship on SNSs and reflecting the proposed five dimensions of friendship quality. Multiple group confirmatory factor analyses supported measurement invariance across younger and older adolescents, and across boys and girls, at the levels of equal factor structure and loadings. Cronbach's alphas indicated a good internal consistency of each dimension. Correlation analysis indicated that the dimensions were strongly correlated to each other, which is unsurprising because they reflect the overall friendship quality. Based upon these results, we can conclude that dimensions of friendship quality can validly and reliably be assessed using the FQSNS-questionnaire. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Recent research indicates that there may be a relationship between the characteristics of the audit engagement partner and audit quality. In this paper, we examine the relationship between audit quality and the presence of a female or male audit engagement partner. We use the likelihood that an auditor issues a going-concern opinion (GCO), conditional on the client's financial situation, as an indicator of audit quality. Using a sample of 7105 financially distressed, private Belgian companies, we find that female auditors are, ceteris paribus, more likely to issue GCOs than male auditors. Our results also show that this effect is stronger when clients are either important (i.e. represent a material portion of the auditor's revenues) or high-risk (i.e. associated with increased uncertainties and risks). Collectively, these results indicate higher audit quality by female auditors.

To investigate the association between personality traits, perceived social norms, and sexual harassment in the workplace, 199 white-collar workers answered an online questionnaire (96 men, 103 women). Based on logistic regression analysis, we investigated the associations between sexual harassment behaviors in the workplace, perceived social norms, and the personality traits extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. Results suggest that lower levels of openness are associated with higher levels of sexual harassment behaviors for both men and women. Furthermore, for both men and women, the association between openness and sexual harassment behaviors is greater if one perceives higher acceptance of sexual harassment by their peers. For men, sexual harassment behaviors are also associated with age, sexual harassment myth acceptance, and lower levels of conscientiousness. In contrast, for women sexual harassment behaviors are associated with higher levels of extraversion and neuroticism.

The majority of adolescents have at least one unknown person as friend on SNSs.Subjective norm is the most important determinant of accepting strangers as friends.Prevention strategies of random friending should incorporate subjective norm.Adolescents with high bonding social capital tend to share a more negative attitude.Adolescents with high bridging social capital tend to share a more positive attitude. Drawing on a survey conducted among 1743 pupils in 16 Belgian secondary schools, this study applies an extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) to adolescents' acceptance of friendship requests sent by online strangers on social network sites (SNSs). As demonstrated in the literature, random friending on social networking sites can heavily impact adolescents' safety online. Results yielded by means of Structural Equation Modeling show that the subjective norm with regard to the acceptance of strangers as SNS friends is the most important predictor, followed by PBC and attitude. Bonding social capital (an individual's disposal of strong, intimate ties) is negatively associated with attitude and subjective norm, whereas bridging social capital (an individual's disposal of weak, superficial ties) is positively associated with the three TPB antecedents.

Speculation about gender differences has a long standing tradition. If it is not the size of the brains, then it is mathematical ability; if it is not impulses toward aggression, then it is interhemispheric transfer of information; if it is not preferences in types of play activities, then it is pleasure in genital sexuality. For as long as there has been neuroscience there has been scientific interest in differences between male and female brains (and their psychological implications). In this paper, I critically appraise the book "Delusions of Gender," in which the British psychologist Cordelia Fine criticizes neuroscientific claims about gender differences (and their interpretations by popular science writers).

SUMMARY This study investigates the existence of a female audit fee premium (i.e., higher audit fees for female audit engagement partners). We analyze 57,723 firm-year observations from Belgian firms that were audited by 93 female and 599 male audit partners during the period 2008–2011. The results suggest that client firms pay higher audit fees (by about 7 percent) to female auditors. The findings are confirmed by an array of robustness checks, including a propensity score matched sample, a Heckman two-stage procedure, an examination of a sample of clients that switched audit partners, and fixed effects models. The combined evidence in this study suggests the existence of a female audit fee premium. This fee premium may exist because of gender differences in knowledge, skills, abilities, preferences, and behavior or due to supply-side factors (e.g., a demand for diversity, gendered perceptions about audit quality, or client satisfaction). Data Availability: The data are publicly available from the sources identified in the paper.

Addressing the scarcity of gender research in management control studies, this study examines whether CEO gender is a significant variable in explaining cross-sectional variation in management control choices after controlling for firm and industry context, for the presence of a board and for the individual CEO’s experiences. Using survey data our results reveal an incremental explanatory power for CEO gender with control practices that to a large extent serve a CEO’s own managerial decision making, such as action planning and the use of financial performance measures for company target setting and evaluation. We observe no gender effect at all with respect to those controls that are used almost exclusively to communicate with and guide employees (i.e., reward, compensation, and administrative controls). Based on insights from the literature on stereotypical gender role attributes, the results of our study imply that female CEOs sometimes conform to their gender role for controls which serve their own decision making and conform to their leadership role when controls involve communicating, guidance, evaluating, and rewarding. With this study we contribute not only to the control literature, but also more broadly to manager-effect studies by integrating different literatures to provide more insight into when CEO gender matters to explain control choices. We illustrate that differences in context and differences in control purposes wipe out a number of stereotype-driven perceptions.

De hoofddoelstelling van deze studie is te onderzoeken of er een verband bestaat tussen niet-auditdiensten en de auditkwaliteit op de Belgische auditmarkt. Meer bepaald zal het onderzoek bepalen of, en in welke mate, de diensten die worden verstrekt door de commissaris van een vennootschap en door zijn netwerk bijkomend aan de uitoefening van zijn commissarismandaat de kwaliteit van de audit en zijn onafhankelijkheid beïnvloeden. Onderzoek naar dit verband is relevant rekening houdend met het huidige debat dat naar aanleiding van de financiële crisis op Europees niveau wordt gevoerd omtrent de beperking of zelfs het volledig verbod op het leveren van niet-auditdiensten door de auditor aan zijn auditklanten.

De kwaliteit van auditrapportering en in het bijzonder de melding van continuïteitsproblemen is voor diverse stakeholders in het ondernemingsgebeuren van groot belang. Beslissingen omtrent het melden van continuïteitsproblemen zijn voor auditors echter niet altijd eenvoudig. Vaak wordt de "accuraatheid" van zulke beslissingen dan ook als een indicator voor auditkwaliteit aanzien. In dit onderzoek werd nagegaan in welke mate het rapporteren van continuïteitsproblemen samenhangt met verschillende kenmerken van de auditor. Er werd daarbij zowel gekeken naar zogenaamde Type I misclassificaties (d.w.z. een melding van continuïteitsproblemen in het auditrapport zonder dat de onderneming failliet ging binnen de 12 maanden na balansdatum) en Type II misclassificaties (d.w.z. het ontbreken van een melding van continuïteitsproblemen in het auditrapport terwijl de onderneming failliet ging binnen de 12 maanden na balansdatum). Dit onderzoek maakte gebruik van een steekproef van 7,149 Belgische ondernemingen die in financiële moeilijkheden verkeerden, inclusief 69 ondernemingen die binnen de 12 maanden na balansdatum failliet gingen. Uit de resultaten blijkt dat auditors die geen deel uitmaken van de Big 4 auditkantoren accurater zijn in het rapporteren van continuïteitsproblemen. Andere factoren die traditioneel geassocieerd worden met een hogere auditkwaliteit, zoals ervaring of industriespecialisatie, blijken echter niet geassocieerd te zijn met de accuraatheid va

Women are still a minority in the audit profession, especially at the partner level. An increasing amount of literature has explored the sources of this gender inequality. Past studies have, however, neglected the possibility that the processes that lead to the (re)production of gender differences and hierarchies may differ between audit firms of different sizes. In this article, we combine quantitative with qualitative data to explore how gender inequalities regarding promotion and access to resources of power (at the partner level) might differ between audit firms of different sizes. Our data show that women who achieve partnership in large firms (but not in some smaller firms) are confronted with a second-level glass ceiling, as they do not play leading roles within their firms. This can be explained by the higher demands of commitment large firms place upon (prospective) partners and these firms’ greater focus on the commercial side of auditing.

In this paper, we test the effectiveness of an expanded auditor’s report vis-a-vis an audit course in narrowing the expectations gap. We compared two auditor’s reports in a between subjects design: the ISA 700 report and an expanded auditor’s report. We also examined if explaining audits to users is (more) effective in reducing the expectations gap (compared to expanding the auditor’s report). Belgian economics students participated in an experiment where the first group read a standard auditor’s report and the second read a manipulated auditor’s report. Moreover, a third group of students who already had taken an audit course, contrary to the two other groups, did not read any of the two auditor’s reports. Through a questionnaire survey, we elicited the students’ perceptions on different dimensions of the responsibilities of the auditor and the signaling power of the auditor’s report. Overall, a more thorough explanation of technical audit concepts in the auditor’s report does not significantly narrow the expectations gap. Students who already had an audit course, however, showed more reasonable expectations towards the auditor’s role and responsibilities, leading to a significant smaller expectations gap.

In a large-scale laboratory experiment, we investigate gender differences in overconfidence and risk taking. Our results show that (self-)selection and socialization can eliminate the gender difference in overconfidence, but they appear insufficient to create environments in which women are as risk loving as men.

Anhand von Prüfungshonorardaten des belgischen Abschlussprüfungsmarktes wird analysiert, ob eine Differenzierung der Prüfungsqualität auf der Ebene der individuell beauftragten Prüfungspartner existiert. Die empirischen Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Markt für Abschlussprüfungen eine Differenzierung der Prüfungsqualität innerhalb Prüfungsgesellschaften anerkennt, indem individuellen Prüfungspartnern, die weiblich und weniger erfahren sind, zur Französisch sprechenden Bevölkerung gehören, weniger Kunden oder einen größeren Marktanteil haben, durch eine Honorarprämie honoriert werden., We investigate if audit quality differentiation exists at the level of the individual audit engagement partner by studying audit fee data from the Belgian audit market. The empirical results show that the audit market recognizes audit quality differentiation within audit firms by rewarding individual audit partners with fee premiums when they are female, are less experienced, have indicated a French-speaking affiliation, have less clients or have a larger market share.

Nowadays, most countries have audit markets that are dominated by a few relatively equal-sized international firms (the "Big Four"). Several audit regulators around the world have expressed concern over this (growing) market concentration by Big Four audit firms and the adverse effects it may have on audit quality and audit fees (e.g., European Commission, 2010; GAO, 2008; Oxera, 2006; United States Treasury, 2008). In its recent Green Paper, Consultation on audit policy - Lessons from the crisis, the European Commission (2010, p. 15), for example, stated that "the market appears to be too concentrated in certain segments and deny clients sufficient choice when deciding on their auditors". Basically, regulators' concern is that higher levels of concentration imply less competitive markets (while it is widely believed by economists, antitrust scholars, and legislators that competition is a good thing, making consumers better off). The purpose of this article is to provide an overview on the level of concentration in the Belgian audit market (for the year 2008) and to examine if and to which extent concentration is still increasing.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine if there exists a gender difference in overconfidence within an auditor population. Studies outside the accounting domain have found that men are more overconfident than women. It would be worthwhile to know if such a gender difference in overconfidence also exists within the auditor population. Such a gender difference could have far‐reaching consequences; among other things, it could explain why client firms with female audit partners have significantly higher audit fees. Because of substantial self‐selection and socialization it could however be that female auditors are as overconfident as their male colleagues.Design/methodology/approachAs is common in the psychological literature, calibration tests were used to measure the degree of overconfidence of male and female auditors.FindingsThe results provide no evidence for a gender difference in overconfidence within a population of auditors and warrant against generalizing findings from non‐audit populations to auditors.Research limitations/implicationsConsistent with previous research, overconfidence was treated as if it were a single construct. The different varieties of overconfidence may, however, not simply be interchangeable. It may be the case that one measure of overconfidence would produce a sex difference while the other would not.Practical implicationsThis study contributes to the growing literature that examines the effects of gender on audit judgment and decision making. An important implication is that the results clearly warrant against generalizing findings from non‐audit populations to auditors.Originality/valueThis is the first study to investigate if a gender difference in overconfidence exists within an auditor population.

In België zijn alle 'grote' ondernemingen verplicht een commissaris te benoemen. De drempels die moeten worden overschreden om beschouwd te worden als 'grote' onderneming zijn echter relatief laag. Omdat die drempels eerder laag zijn, zijn vele relatief kleine ondernemingen in België verplicht om een commissaris ana te stellen. De toegevoegde waarde van een audit voor zulke relatief kleine ondernemingen is echter een punt van discussie. De wetenschappelijke literatuur biedt op dit ogenblik bovendien geen eenduidig beeld. In deze studie probeerden we daarom na te gaan of ondernemingen in België nog steeds een commissaris zouden benoemen indien zij daar niet langer toe verplicht zouden zijn. Daarnaast probeerden we ook na te gaan welke factoren zouden bijdragen aan ondernemingen hun beslissing om al dan niet vrijwillig een commissaris te benoemen. De resultaten van onze studie (gebaseerd op een e-mail enquête, n = 288) tonen aan dat de meerderheid van de ondernemingen in België (bijna 65%) nog steeds een commissaris zouden benoemen ook indien zij daar niet langer toe verplicht zouden zijn. De belangrijkste redenen voor ondernemingen om vrijwillig een commissaris te benoemen (i.e., de toegevoegde waarde van de audit) zijn het feit dat de audit de betrouwbaarheid van de jaarrekeningen verhoogt, de interne controlesystemen van ondernemingen verbetert en omdat de aanstelling van een commissaris een onderneming een soort van financiële discipline oplegt. Daarnaast toont onze studie ook aan dat grotere ondernemingen, ondernemingen met meer aandeelhouders en beursgenoteerde ondernemingen meer geneigd zouden zijn om vrijwillig een commissaris te benoemen.

In deze studie onderzochten we welke factoren een invloed uitoefenen op de hoogte van het audithonorarium in België. Naast klant-, mandaat- en auditkantoorkarakteristieken namen we ook individuele auditorkarakteristieken als mogelijke determinant op. Meer in het bijzonder onderzochten we of het geslacht van de bedrijfsrevisor een significante invloed uitoefent op de hoogte van het audithonorarium. Op basis van een multivariaat regressiemodel en de gegevens van 13.828 Belgische ondernemingen die in 2008 een commissaris hadden aangesteld, stelden we vast dat (de mediaan van) het audithonorarium van vrouwelijke bedrijfsrevisoren ongeveer 7 % hoger ligt dan dit van mannelijke bedrijfsrevisoren.

Auditor-gender heeft mogelijk een impact op de kwaliteit van auditing omdat mannen en vrouwen in meerdere opzichten van elkaar verschillen. Om vrij van systematische fouten genderonderzoek binnen een auditcontext te kunnen voeren is het echter noodzakelijk om uitsluitsel te hebben over de vraag of bevindingen uit de psychologische literatuur probleemloos geïmplementeerd kunnen worden in een auditkader, anders gezegd, of wat geldt voor de gemiddelde man en vrouw ook geldt voor auditors. Het valt immers niet a priori uit te maken of auditors een willekeurige steekproef uit de bevolking zijn met betrekking tot karakteristieken die relevant zijn voor auditkwaliteit (e.g. risico-profiel). Om die problematiek het hoofd te bieden werden mannen en vrouwen uit verschillende subpopulaties (niet-economiestudenten, economiestudenten en auditors) onderzocht. De resultaten geven aan dat de vrouwelijke auditor minder van haar mannelijke collega verschilt dan de gemiddelde vrouw van de gemiddelde man. Bovendien suggereren deresultaten dat dit vermoedelijk eerder het gevolg van de professionele (en onderwijskundige) vorming van auditors is dan van zelfselectie.

Audit quality is a much studied issue. Recently, various auditing researchers have looked at the idea that audit quality may be systematically related to the auditor being male or female. Although this seams a genuine research question, the approach adopted by these researchers (incorporating ‘sex/gender as a variable’ into the research design) is highly problematic in nature and offers little to our understanding of complex social behavior. In this paper, we argue that female auditors are likely to experience subtle, but frequent stereotype threat because audit firms make gender salient. Little is known about how individual behavior inside audit firms might affect audit quality. From research on stereotype threat we know, however, that people produce stereotypical behavior in a self-fulfilling way when gender is made salient. Arguably, the display of stereotypical masculine (e.g., competitiveness) and feminine (e.g., nurturing) behaviors affects the production of audit quality. Using a qualitative methodology (based principally upon a program of semi-structured interviews), we investigate if audit firms elicit male-female behavioral differences that give rise to the production of gendered audit quality. Our findings demonstrate the manner in which the background gender frame becomes powerfully relevant in shaping the way people act upon their role as auditor. The paper identifies four (broad) themes that foster a systematic relationship between audit quality and the auditor being male or female: (1) the commercial side of auditing, (2) game-playing, (3) disappointment with the audit firm, and (4) the networked professional.