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Article Excerpt
The major investment for accounting firms is in human capital. The personal attributes of the professionals employed and the conditions under which they work lead to important consequences for the accounting firms, for the professionals themselves, and for those who rely on their work. Certain attributes and work conditions may lead to different levels of performance and various psychological states, which also may influence whether employees choose to stay with the organization. Research on job performance in public accounting has been selective in scope. Subsets of variables such as experience, autonomy, role ambiguity, and job performance have been studied, but there have been few studies integrating the variables into comprehensive models, and even fewer that have done so in a public accounting setting.
This study develops and tests a comprehensive model that integrates the traditional variables listed above, and also introduces an additional exogenous variable. The additional variable, exercised responsibility, is one of four factors in the Ascription of Responsibility Questionnaire (ARQ) (Hakstian et al., 1986). The ARQ, which includes biographical and attitudinal variables, was developed to capture people's willingness to ascribe responsibility in specific and diffuse ways. The exercised responsibility scale uses biographical items to measure the extent to which a person has exercised authority. In this study, the scale is shown to be important in terms of model specification and has a strong positive relationship with auditor job performance. The introduction of exercised responsibility into an integrated model of exogenous and endogenous variables contributes to the understanding of job performance in a professional setting.
Below, we first review the literature and develop hypotheses for the variables of interest. The study's sample, measures, and data analysis methods are then described. This is followed by a presentation and discussion of the results, including implications for management practice and future re search.
THEORY DEVELOPMENT AND HYPOTHESES
For purposes of this study, exercised responsibility, experience, autonomy, and role ambiguity are considered important personal attributes and work conditions for auditors. Job performance is the work outcome of interest. This section discusses each concept and develops related hypotheses.
Job Performance
For any occupational group, performance on the job is an important work outcome. In the case of auditors, job performance relates to the quality of audits. Poor performance may create the potential for errors, legal liability, and loss of credibility (Fisher, 2001). Recent accounting and auditing scandals, such as Enron, have heightened the need for quality audit performance at the individual and firm level. Therefore, for accounting firms, individual job performance has significant aggregate consequences for audit quality, revenues, legal exposure, and even continued existence. For individual auditors, evaluation of job performance has importance for raises, promotion, and job tenure. Thus, job performance is considered a key outcome in this study.
Exercised Responsibility and Personality Traits
Research in social psychology has examined a host of personality traits and their relationship to important outcomes and behaviors. Barrick and Mount (1991) examined job performance and its relationship to extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness experience. They found that conscientiousness and its positive relationship to job performance to be the most prominent across studies and occupations. In a separate study, Barrick and Mount (1993) found conscientiousness and extraversion significantly associated with job performance for a sample of managers. Judge and Bono's (2001) meta-analysis found a moderately strong association between job performance and core self-evaluations traits (self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, and internal locus of control). In accounting, research results for the relationship between locus of control and performance is mixed. While Patten (2005) found that internal auditors with higher levels of internal locus of control performed better, Hyatt and Prawitt (2001) found that external auditors with an internal locus of control performed better in firms with an unstructured audit approach, and Donnelly, Quirin, and O'Bryan (2003) did not find a significant relationship for external auditors.
Events of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Vietnam War, assassinations, and other political and social turmoil, gave rise to interest in certain attributes and attitudes of individuals, such as locus of control (Rotter, 1990). Rotter (1966) developed the locus of control variable, which measures the extent to which individuals attribute outcomes to their own behavior and traits (internal), or to powers or events beyond their control (external). Similarly, the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam Conflict and the resulting court martial of Lieutenant Calley gave considerable impetus to responsibility attribution research, specifically internal versus external attributions of responsibility (Suedfeld et al., 1985). One result of such research was the development of the 40-item Ascription of Responsibility Questionnaire (ARQ), which categorized responses into four scales: traditional focused, diffuse, exercised, and individual-focused responsibility (Hakstian et al., 1986). Traditional focused responsibility includes biographical and attitudinal items related to ascription of responsibility to traditional authority figures, such as "God, government, parents, and schools" (Hakstian et al., 1986: 235). Diffuse responsibility includes attitudinal measures reflecting the tendency of individuals to view the "social group" as the "locus of authority" (Haksfian et al., 1986: 236). Individual focused responsibility is also attitudinal, reflecting "a belief in an individualistic ethic (consistent with the Protestant Ethic)" (Hakstian et al., 1986: 237).
The exercised responsibility scale of the ARQ was selected for this research. Although auditor perception of each of the other three more general, and mostly attitudinal, ARQ scales could be related to job outcomes, the seven items that make up this scale have a biographical content and assess how much a person has exercised authority, rather than how that person views authority (Hakstian et al., 1986). Scores on this scale are positively correlated with scores on measures of achievement, dominance, affiliation, and social desirability, which are "predictable characteristics of leaders" (Hakstian et al., 1986). Hakstian et al. (1986) also found this scale negatively correlated with attributing events to chance and positively correlated with an internal locus of control (i.e., holding one's self responsible). Exercised responsibility would, therefore, appear to be a valuable characteristic in independent auditors, particularly as they advance and are given expanding supervisory and decision making responsibilities on audit engagements. Similar to elements of conscientiousness and internal locus of control, we expect individuals with higher levels of exercised responsibility to perform better. This is summarized in our first hypothesis.
H1: Exercised responsibility is positively associated with job performance.
Experience
Experience is an important consideration for hiring and promotion. The concept of experience includes time in a job or an organization, the amount of work (for example, repetition of tasks), and the type of work (Quinones et al., 1995). Research shows a positive relationship between work experience and job performance, with a stronger relationship for "hard performance measures such as work samples" (Quinones et al.,...
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