Auditors gone wild: The other problem in public accounting

Following the scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, and Qwest Communications, the accounting profession has spent the past several years trying to get back on track. While Sarbanes-Oxley may improve the decision-making of audit professionals, and help prevent future large-scale catastrophes that hurt stockholders and bring down firms, there is another problem in public accounting that few consider and nobody has proposed to solve: deviant workplace behavior. Previous research describes deviant workplace behavior as the voluntary behavior of organizational members that violates significant organizational norms and, in so doing, threatens the well being of the organization and/or its members. Building from recent work in various business literatures, this is the first research since the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley to examine workplace deviance at Big 4 accounting firms. Taking a cross-disciplinary, collaborative approach, the authors endeavor to explain why workplace deviance has infiltrated accounting firms and how it is undermining their effectiveness and derailing their long-term prospects for success. After describing its genesis and effects, the authors prescribe several managerial strategies for preventing deviance and minimizing its effects on a firm. © 2008 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University

From clear to complicated: Buying and selling accounting services post Sarbanes-Oxley

While much has been said and written about the effect of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), one consequence of the new regulation that has been largely neglected is the law\u27s dramatic impact on how audits are bought and sold in the United States. Prior to SOX, the process was clear and simple: accounting firm partners would meet with the publicly held client company\u27s C-level executives to complete the exchange. When SOX was passed, Congress took the buying decision out of the hands of the client company\u27s executives and placed it in the hands of the company\u27s external audit committee. As this inter-disciplinary research will explain, this change-and other similar changes emanating from the independence provisions in SOX-has forever complicated the client-auditor exchange. Based on the literature in business-to-business selling, this research proposes two models-one centered around the concept of a buying center and another around selling team theory-in an effort to advance thinking in this area, and help both client companies and accounting firms operate in this new environment. © 2010 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University

From clear to complicated: Buying and selling accounting services post Sarbanes-Oxley

While much has been said and written about the effect of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), one consequence of the new regulation that has been largely neglected is the law's dramatic impact on how audits are bought and sold in the United States. Prior to SOX, the process was clear and simple: accounting firm partners would meet with the publicly held client company's C-level executives to complete the exchange. When SOX was passed, Congress took the buying decision out of the hands of the client company's executives and placed it in the hands of the company's external audit committee. As this inter-disciplinary research will explain, this change--and other similar changes emanating from the "independence" provisions in SOX--has forever complicated the client-auditor exchange. Based on the literature in business-to-business selling, this research proposes two models--one centered around the concept of a "buying center" and another around "selling team" theory--in an effort to advance thinking in this area, and help both client companies and accounting firms operate in this new environment.Sarbanes-Oxley Buyer-Seller Relationship selling Auditing

Uncovering the enemy within: Examining salesperson deviance and its determinants

While sales researchers have studied the underlying causes of positive workplace behaviors like organizational citizenship, comparatively less work has been done in the area of negative workplace behaviors or what is often referred to as workplace deviance . In two separate studies, this research examines different antecedents of deviant salesperson behavior. The first study brings the concept of deviant behavior into the sales domain and develops a three-dimensional classification of salesperson deviance: organizational deviance, interpersonal deviance and front-line deviance. We develop a conceptual model to examine the organizational and management factors that drive these three different forms of salesperson deviance. To ensure discriminant validity, our conceptual model also includes two forms of positive salesperson behavior (organizational citizenship and sales service). Our second study examines the effect of several individual salesperson factors (person-org fit, trait competitiveness and hours worked) on the three forms of deviant salesperson behavior and tests whether two forms of manager empowerment (manager confidence and meaningfulness of work) lessen the effect of competitiveness and hours worked on deviance. For both studies, we empirically test our hypotheses using survey data collected from 160 business-to-business salespeople from multiple companies and multiple industries and analyze our results.