The effect of audit team diversity on audit quality (R-11562)

In the last decade, audit literature has emphasized that individual auditors are responsible for the execution and thus quality of the audit. We argue that we should not only take into account these individual characteristics to investigate audit quality because auditing requires that these individual auditors work together in teams. Especially the differences in individual characteristics among audit team members, labelled as team diversity, can affect team outcomes. In this PhD, we will therefore focus on separation as diversity, studying the impact of differences in values and personality among audit team members on the team result being the quality of the audit. Separation can create social divisions, conflicts and relational tensions, which in turn can be detrimental for team effectiveness. Moreover, we will also study when these negative effects of separation prevail by studying 'time pressure' as a team context that does not mitigate but reinforces the negative effects of separation on team outcomes such as audit quality. Finally, we will also investigate what role the audit team leader should play in order to deal with this diversity in his/her audit team in order to enhance audit quality. By making use of team diversity (and more specifically separation), team processes, team contexts and team leadership, we aim to contribute to the determinants of audit quality in audit literature, going beyond the traditional individual team member characteristics.

Keywords:audit quality, team diversity

Disciplines:Accounting and auditing