دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی رابطه ی رهبری مشتری تحول گرا و بی طرفی حسابرس - امرالد 2017

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether transformational leadership affects auditor objectivity. Design/methodology/approach – The investigation is based on a field survey of 198 practicing auditors employed by audit firms operating in Sweden. Findings – This study finds that transformational client leadership negatively affects auditor objectivity and that the effect is only partially mediated by client identification. Given these results, suggesting that auditors are susceptible to influence by their clients’ perceived exercise of transformational leadership, leadership theory appears relevant to the discussion of auditor objectivity in the accounting literature. Originality/value – Previous accounting research has applied the social identity theory framework and found that client identification impairs auditor objectivity. However, the effect of transformational client leadership on auditor objectivity, which reflects an intense auditor-client relationship, has been neglected before this study.

5. Discussion

This paper examines the threat to auditor objectivity posed by transformational client leadership. Previous accounting research has, with few exceptions, focused on financial incentives, paying little attention to the bonding caused by social forces such as cognitivebased personal relationships with clients. The few studies of non-financial incentives have found that auditors’ identification with their client firms poses a threat to auditor objectivity (Bamber and Iyer, 2007; Stefaniak et al., 2012; Bauer, 2015; Svanberg and Öhman, 2015) because auditors who identify with their client firms are more likely to acquiesce to client-preferred treatments during the audit process. The findings of these pioneering studies indicate that non-financial factors are serious threats to auditor objectivity that lie mostly under the surface remaining to be discovered. This study builds on the studies mentioned above, and the substantial amount of leadership research providing evidence that individuals who identify with a group or organization become more susceptible to influence from the group or organization leader (e.g. Howell and Shamir, 2005; van Knippenberg, 2011).