Examining Climate and Culture in Audit Firms: Insights, Practice Implications, and Future Research Directions

What is it about?

This paper synthesizes research related to audit firm climate and culture. Organizational climate and culture are important to any organization but are particularly important in auditing because of the unique tension among being a regulated profession, a for-profit organization, and performing independent audits on behalf of the public interest. This paper's objectives include introducing the constructs of organizational climate and culture and their application to audit research, reviewing the audit literature to identify and synthesize climate and culture findings, and suggesting future research opportunities to further our understanding of these topics. We identify and discuss four firm climate themes (organizational control, leadership, ethical, and regulatory) and three firm culture themes (professionalism, commercialism, and socialization) rooted within audit firms and studied by audit academics. Through our synthesis we identify different ways that auditor behavior and audit quality is influenced by both firm climate and firm culture.

Featured Image