Auditors’ Work Attitudes: Translating Auditor JDM Research Findings to Inform Audit Firms’ Strategies

Abstract

SYNOPSIS Audit firms are undertaking tremendous efforts to improve auditors’ work attitudes as one approach to tackling talent shortages. We present an auditors’ work attitudes framework to help practitioners identify relevant research from auditor judgment and decision-making (JDM) studies and to translate these findings for application to practice. Practitioners might overlook auditor JDM research because it tends to focus on individual auditor tasks and performance outcomes rather than firm-wide practices. Nonetheless, it may serve as a relevant source of evidence to inform firms’ strategies. We use illustrative examples of auditor JDM studies to demonstrate how firms can apply our auditors’ work attitudes framework to firm initiatives, such as employee surveys and audit work designs. Our framework also helps researchers identify gaps in scholarly work on auditors’ work attitudes.