Audit anticipation: does it impact job performance?

Abstract

Purpose – To determine if the anticipation of an initial audit affects an individual's accuracy in preparing vouchers – an accounting task – in a business environment.Design/methodology/approach – A laboratory setting was chosen to maintain greater control over the variables influencing an individual's performance of a typical accounting activity.Findings – The results of the analyses indicated that anticipation of the audit does influence accuracy of performance of the participants, who made a statistically significant smaller number of errors than their counterparts not anticipating an audit. The research design involved varying the content and source of the communications which subjects received describing the purpose and conduct of the audit. The subjects chosen for the experiment were 90 College of Business and Economics students.Research limitations/implications – The study uses students to surrogate for internal audit personnel and it is based in the USA, which may limit its usefulness elsewhere.Pr...