Academic auditing research: an exploratory investigation into its usefulness

Abstract

This paper has been produced in reaction to the publication of the AICPA/AAA monograph entitledAuditing Practice, Research, and Education: A Productive Collaboration . In our view, the monograph relied on a narrow conception of auditing-research usefulness. This paper aims to investigate usefulness of auditing research from a perspective more global than that of the monograph. Our theoretical discussion focuses on who may benefit from auditing research and in what ways. We supplemented our theoretical work with an empirical assessment of auditing-research usefulness from the point of view of auditors. In particular, we content analysed a series of auditing-research articles written by North American academics and published in a set of journals that, collectively, play a large role in validating these academics’ knowledge claims. Our results suggest that auditing research is to a large extent “useful" to auditors, that is to say, auditing papers generally possess a relatively high degree of applicability, and the degree to which auditing papers threaten the legitimacy of the auditing profession is relatively low. We then put forward that this degree of usefulness is the result of auditors’ efforts to control the auditing-research community. In fact, research resources, such as business funding of research, allow auditors to exert influence over academic researchers in their quest to capture the research community.