EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Hierarchical Differences in Audit Workpaper Review Performance*

Noel Harding and Ken T. Trotman

Contemporary Accounting Research, 1999, vol. 16, issue 4, 671-684

Abstract: This paper investigates the performance of senior and staff auditors in the identification of conceptual and mechanical errors during workpaper review. In this study, we begin to examine the potential for effectiveness and efficiency gains by involving staff (assistant) auditors in the review process. We find that senior auditors were more accurate than staff auditors in identifying conceptual errors contained in a hypothetical set of workpapers just reviewed. However, staff auditors were more accurate than senior auditors in identifying mechanical errors. Highlighting the benefits of a hierarchical review, composite groups consisting of a staff auditor and a senior outperformed composite groups consisting of two seniors or two staff auditors. The study finds that the differences in review performance between managers and seniors found in Ramsay 1994 generalize to lower levels of experience. Considering our results in conjunction with Ramsay 1994, we show a progression to a more conceptual review template as the rank of the reviewer moves from staff to senior to manager. The paper provides some guidance to audit firms that are presently introducing major changes to the way in which the review process is carried out, including the inclusion of reviews by staff auditors.

Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1911-3846.1999.tb00600.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:coacre:v:16:y:1999:i:4:p:671-684

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Contemporary Accounting Research from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-17
Handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:16:y:1999:i:4:p:671-684