Opening the Black Box of Audit Teams:
Qualitative Evidence on Composition and Role Structure
Alice Annelin
Umeå School of business and Economics
Tobias Svanström
Umeå School of business and Economics
Marleen Willekens
KU Leuven and BI Norwegian Business School
Draft December 2016
Preliminary
Please do not quote without the authors’ permission
Opening the Black Box of Audit Teams:
Qualitative evidence on Composition and Role Structure
Abstract
Almost twenty years ago Rich, Solomon and Trotman (1997) discussed the need for more research on
audit teams, yet there is still little known about which audit team factors affect audit work and quality.
In order to open the audit team black box, this study qualitatively explores audit team composition and
role structures and how these may influence audit quality. Based on literature from organisational studies
on hierarchical structures we focus on power, status and diversity as drivers of the composition and role
structures in audit teams. Interviews were conducted with members of eight different audit engagement
teams to collect data from an audit team experience perspective. The results indicate that audit team
composition occurs with a vertical hierarchical power structure in mind, thereby taking into account the
competence, availability and development stage an audit employee holds. However, our interviewees
further also revealed that audit process modifications are often triggered by (modified) team costs, team
sizes and changes in team members and that this is believed to affect audit quality. We further find that
despite the formal vertical hierarchical power structure typical to audit firms, audit teams de facto often
have horizontal hierarchical power structures. In particular, the Audit Manager (AM) dilutes the power
of the Auditor in Charge (AIC) and is considered the most important role managing the execution of the
actual audit engagement. The relation between AM and AIC appears to be paramount and more
specifically we find that trust, status and close relations may help to improve information uncertainty
and therefore the audit outcomes. Finally we also used our findings to make several recommendations
for future research.
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Opening the Black Box of Audit Teams:
Qualitative evidence on Composition and Role Structure
1. Introduction
An audit is typically performed by an audit team, yet audit teams are considered a “black box”
in audit research (Francis, 2011; Rich, Solomon, & Trotman, 1997). Some early work has
documented that audit teams outperform individual auditors on an audit engagement (Solomon,
1982; Trotman & Yetton, 1985), which indicates the importance of better understanding the
audit team and its influence on audit quality. In addition, from a theoretical perspective
attribution theory (Malle, 2011) suggests that not only the attributes of an individual affects an
outcome, but also the attributes of the situation in which an individual works. One of the
situations individual auditors work with is that they conduct the audit in a team of auditors and
other experts and rarely work alone. Where some recent studies investigate the influence of
individual auditor characteristics on audit quality (Gul, Wu, & Yang, 2013; Nelson & Tan,
2005), little is known about the effect of audit teams.
The IAASB issued guidelines about which audit team inputs, process and context can
influence audit quality, and specifically states that engagement teams should be “properly
structured (IAASB, 2014)”. Although the IAASB does not define what it means by team
structure, prior research about teams in the workplace addresses team structure along two
dimensions: composition structure and role structure. Composition structure can be described
as the surface diversity of the team, including team size, skills of the various team members,
job positions and other demographic variables (Harrison, Price, & Bell, 1998; Wageman,
Hackman, & Lehman, 2005). Role structure can be described as the deep diversity of the team,
including team member interrelations, status relations, trust among team members and shared
goals (Forsyth, 2010; Harrison et al., 1998). The purpose of our study is to explore how audit
teams are structured, how these structures function and why differences in composition and role
structures may influence audit outcomes.
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Research on audit teams is scarce. A recent study by Cameran, Ditillo, & Pettinicchio,
(2015) documents that composition structure factors, such as the proportion of hours,
educational background, gender and change in management of an audit team influences audit
quality. Van Linden, Knechel and Willekens (2016) find that audit team size has a concave
relation to audit quality and that familiarity between partner and manager improves audit
quality. Our study differs from prior research as we investigate audit team members’
perspectives on specific audit team engagements to account for the ‘audit team experience’,
rather than an individual account of an engagement experience. In particular, as we collect
qualitative data about the audit team experiences of team members on a set of audit
engagements we aim to enrich our understanding of potential audit team composition and role
variables that may influence audit quality (Gibbins & Qu, 2005). Thus, the data collected in this
study can reveal how and why specific audit team composition structures and role structures
may influence audit quality from an audit team’s perspective of the specific audit team situation.
In order to open the “black box” to gain a better understanding of different audit team
structures from a practical perspective, there is a need to understand how auditors perceive their
audit team experiences and the meanings behind these perceptions. However, we can also learn
from an application of theories already established in team literature. This study does not aim
to test relations between different audit team factors, but instead explores an understanding of
audit teams through practical meaning and theoretical understanding. Also, this study does not
aim to understand the individual’s personality influence on audit quality, but instead the
situation of the whole audit team’s influence on audit quality. Therefore, a comparison of
several audit teams’ perspectives on their specific team engagement experience is conducted in
order to make suggestions for future research. We aim to deliver insight into the following
research questions: how audit teams are composed and why; how audit team role structures
function and why; and why audit team structures influence audit outcomes.
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This research contributes to the audit quality literature by presenting data on audit team
composition and role structure collected by interviews. The major findings are as follows. First,
audit team composition is structured by considerations of audit team member competence,
availability and development. Second, audit composition is influenced by cost, team size and
team changes, which supports and adds to Cameran et al.’s (2015) results on audit team
structures. Third, the audit team process is influenced by audit team inputs, and most
noteworthy is the important role of the audit manager that has been played by the assistant. The
AIC can be located at different audit offices to the audit team, which can result in less access
to the AIC. However, results indicate that trust is built between AMs and their AIC, which
could mitigate any negative influence on audit quality. Therefore, this research finds possible
support for Van Linden, Knechel and Willekens’ (2016) result, that professional familiarity on
audit team engagements influences audit quality. Finally, our results also suggests that audit
team social status may influence audit team behaviours, which is additional information in
support of Bauer and Estep (2015) results.
2. Audit team composition and role structure as elements of an audit quality framework
Knechel, Krishnan, Pevzner, Shefchik, and Velury (2013) developed a balanced
scorecard framework to establish audit quality through four perspectives, inputs, process,
context and outcomes. This framework is based on audit research that suggest the audit inputs
and the audit process are antecedents of audit quality conditional on the individual auditor’s
ability and cognitive bias; context is an antecedent of audit quality based on individual auditor
incentives and pressures that directly affects the inputs and process; and audit outcomes
indirectly measure audit quality by using consequences of an audit. We use this framework to
structure our understanding of the data about audit team inputs and process factors that may
influence audit outcomes (see Figure 1).
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Figure 1 : Audit quality framework as adapted from Knechel et al. (2013, p.404)
Audit Inputs
Audit Process
Incentives and Motivations
Professional Skepticism
Knowledge and Expertise
Within-firm Pressures
Judgement
Audit Production
Assessing Risk
Analytical Procedures
Obtaining and Evaluating
Evidence
Auditor-Client Negotiations
Review and Quality Control
Audit Team
Composition Structures
Audit Outcomes
Audit Team Role Structures
Audit Context
Audit team members are key audit input factors which could differ in terms of their
knowledge, level of professional scepticism, incentives and motivations and pressures (Knechel
et al., 2013). In addition, other audit team factors relating to audit team composition structure,
selection and division of work are important input factors. Audit teams have hierarchical
structures (Bamber, 1983; Rich et al., 1997; Rudolph & Welker, 1998) and according to the
organisational literature these are mainly influenced by power and status relations between team
members (Blader & Chen, 2012; Mannix & Sauer, 2006; Tost, Gino, & Larrick, 2013).
Audit team composition structure as an audit input factor
Audit offices need to manage their human resources as efficiently and effectively as possible
in order to achieve a high quality audit (IAASB, 2014). Prior research reports mixed evidence
as to whether audit team turnover has a positive effect on the quality of the audit (DeFond &
Zhang, 2014). When Audit teams change members, hierarchies can change and power relations
can change, and on top of that information needs to be exchanged between team members.
The size of the audit team may be considered an audit input factor that also influences
the audit process in an engagement (Bauer & Estep, 2015; Cameran et al., 2015), but little is
known about how and why audit team sizes vary or change. Work team size has been found to
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have an important influence on increasing or decreasing team development and productivity
(Wheelan, 2009), revealing that smaller teams of 3-6 members outperform larger teams. Hence,
the larger the audit team the higher the chance that audit quality is threatened. The hierarchical
audit team process of iterative reviews (Rich et al., 1997) represents the role structures of the
audit team, which may be influenced by input factors such as competence as well as the
proportion of hours each audit team member conducts on the team’s engagement.
Audit team role structure as an audit process factor
The role structures in audit teams can be described as the interrelations between team members
with respect to status, trust and goals (Harrison et al., 1998; Roberge & van Dick, 2010;
Tomkins, 2001). Power (1996) finds that levels of trust between members of the audit team can
change over time, internally and between the team and those external to the team. Furthermore,
Tomkins (2001) discusses the interaction between trust and information uncertainty in
accounting work, stating that it is contextualised by how close the team members relate to each
other. Information uncertainty may be decreased by control or trust between audit team
members, however it is unclear whether trust decreases inaccurate exchange of information.
Inaccurate exchange of information has been found to negatively affect the audit judgements
and therefore the audit process (Bedard, Biggs, & Maroney, 1998; Nelson & Tan, 2005;
Rudolph & Welker, 1998).
Research Context and Methodology
This study conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews to collect data that can
reveal details and descriptions of audit team experiences and allow participants to reveal other
relevant information. Since social and cognitive dissonance can occur during communication
between interviewer and interviewee in group and individual settings (Denzin & Lincoln,
2011), we also collected demographic as well as numerical data such as audit hours, length of
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experience, job positions and team role positions1. By using both individual and group
interviews we are able to enrich our understanding of audit team experiences, but we also
recognise that respondents may be more reserved in expressing their opinion in a group
interview situation.
Little is known about audit team structures, yet there is an extensive literature about
team structures external to audit research (Buttigieg, West, & Dawson, 2011; Hinds &
McGrath, 2006; Wageman et al., 2005; Woolley, Gerbasi, Chabris, Kosslyn, & Hackman,
2008). Thus, a semi-structured interview seemed the best fit to collect information from the
audit team’s perspective of their own team experiences in order to better understand the audit
team inputs, process and output factors of audit team structures.
Participants
We gained access to two large audit firms and a medium size audit firm. The contacts were at
local audit offices that allowed us to acquire an emergent snowball sample of practicing audit
teams (Marshall, 1996). We conducted 11 interviews in total with 18 different auditors and 1
tax specialist that form 8 teams. 3 participating auditors were partners, 6 were certified auditors,
9 assistants (See table 1). The size and variation of participants was determined by the amount
of useful information, since all levels of audit teams could give information about the different
perspectives of audit team roles and saturation was reached after 11 interviews.
To enable confidentiality of the client, each team was selected by our contacts at the audit
office and therefore it was the participants that chose the audit engagement experience. We
asked each team to choose and discuss a team experience based on one of the large engagements
at their office (see Table 1) to increase comparability and increase the opportunity to discuss
1
After the interviews we collected some basic data such as contact details, audit hours, length of experience at the
office, at the firm and on the engagement, job positon and role on the team. It was not used as an extensive data
collection method.
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more interactions between team members and between the team and client. The participants
comprised of 42% female and 58% male with a varied amount of experience both as audit team
members and working at the audit firms.
The interviews were conducted in groups and individually. This was mostly due to
restrictions in schedules, but also to gain insight from the positive influences both interview
methods can reveal while conducting semi-structured interviews. For example, allowing
different voices to speak on an individual and team basis can reveal more about the team
experience (Morse, Barrett, Mayan, Olson, & Spiers, 2002). In groups some participants may
speak more and others less due to social behaviour in the team or other cognitive difficulties.
A purposeful sample for the team experience can produce enriched information in
qualitative research (Sandelowski, 1995). Thus it was important to gain participation from as
many team members on a specific audit engagement team so that we could receive as much
information from each team member’s perspective. Our original participants gave us further
potential participant contacts that were located at different offices. Unfortunately, not all team
members of all teams could participate due to some team members leaving the audit industry,
being on sick leave or parental leave situations. One team contact could not participate nor
organise their team to participate due to time constraints on their schedule.
Data Collection
The data collection period was 6th November to 22nd December 2015 and was taken from audit
firms in 3 towns in Sweden. The towns’ size ranged between 70, 000 and 120,000 inhabitants,
however business activities of the clients ranged from locally to nationally or internationally.
Each interview averaged about 1 hour and 30 minutes, ranging from 50 minutes to 1 hour 38
minutes. We conducted 6 interviews in teams face to face, 3 interviews were individuals and
face to face and 2 interviews were individuals by telephone. All participants gave consent to
recording each interview and that the data would be used for audit research purposes. We
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stopped collecting data due to saturation of information, which is a well-established method
used to gauge when to stop collecting qualitative data (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Morse et al.,
2002).
Two researchers were present during every interview except one, while one interviewer
asked the questions the other took notes and reflected on the interview experience. We started
each interview with a general discussion about the research and the purpose of the interview,
letting each participant know about confidentiality and anonymity. One researcher transcribed
the recordings into text and reviewed the transcripts for translation accuracy (the interviews
were conducted in Swedish).
Interview Instrument
The preliminary instrument used for the interview was based on prior literature and a pilot test
was made with three different partners at two different Big 4 audit firms that had not taken part
in any of the audit team engagements. Modifications were made and 5 main semi-structured
interview questions were formed, all with follow-up and probing questions. It was also
encouraged that the participants could give any other information that they thought was relevant
to the specific team experience and additional information in general, so that we could compare
information about their experiences in different teams but also learn about what was specific to
a certain team context. The interview instrument evolved during the data collection period as
we recognised frequent and prevalent topics rising from previous interviews, which lead to one
revision of the instrument at the midway point.
Written demographic details were gathered for control of the information given during
the interview. Singh-Manoux, Adler, & Marmot’s (2003) measurement of social status was
used to investigate team member status. A question asking where the participants think they are
in the ladder of their social status is posed and a picture of a ladder is presented. The participants
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are asked to rank themselves on a social ladder, from top of the ladder as “best off” to bottom
of the ladder as “worst off”. Team goals were also measured by asking the participants to rank
what they prioritise when they conducted the team’s audit engagement, Shareholder, Client,
Audit Firm, Regulators, Wider Society and Other. This was created by an author and is
influenced by the extensive literature on audit quality that make different suggestions to what
auditors might prioritise when conducting an audit engagement.
(Insert table 1 about here: see Appendix)
Data Analysis
The recorded interviews were transcribed and uploaded to NVivo, a qualitative data analysis
software tool. NVivo was used to code the transcripts by predetermined themes and emergent
themes that occurred during the interviews or recognised after reviewing the transcripts. We
developed the coding scheme by connecting the questions to the emerging themes and refined
the categories by comparing team responses and individual responses. The transcripts were also
coded by an external researcher, who was given transcripts without knowledge of the research
subject nor knowing the interview questions. This allowed us to check our understanding of the
interview answers against an unbiased researcher party, which revealed that we agreed on the
coding used and any covariation between the codes.
NVivo allows for further analysis including text search analysis of all the data, analysis
by each team and an analysis by different auditor roles. The program was also used to perform
a covariance analysis of the most common themes to provide for a deeper understanding of the
data and the relationships between the major themes. Coding via the predetermined questions,
theory and emerging data allowed for a more dynamic analysis of the interview data (AndersonGough, Grey, & Robson, 2005). Instead of analysing a quantitative count of the most common
words, the data was used to interpret the meaning behind similar and different experiences of
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the audit teams. We reviewed all codes and responses and selected the quotes to be used for this
paper that were most representative of our findings.
Basic team information was collected at the end of each interview, some conducted by
paper in the presence of the interviewers and others responded later via the internet. The
different approach was due to participant preference, time limits at the interview and distance
between interviewer and participant. An Excel sheet was uploaded to the NVivo program and
coded to each individual response, which allowed for demographic control analysis in order to
support the qualitative interview data.
Small Audit Office Context
Our participants came from a variation of small audit offices. Each of the small offices worked
on audits from a variety of industries, several participants stating that they do not have the
opportunity to specialise in specific industries. Team members described their workload that
ranged from about 120 engagements per year to several hundred and those who had the most
engagements were Partners at the audit firm, but assistants and managers had similar workloads.
The majority of the workloads are with small private companies.
Results
The results of the interviews revealed several propositions that will be presented in order
to answer the research questions and give a qualitative analysis of how and why each audit
team’s composition structure and role structure may influence audit quality. The propositions
may be considered for future research about possible different audit team associations with
audit quality.
Knechel et al.’s (2013) discussion of audit inputs and process factors that are thought to
influence audit quality include the actions of producing, judging, assessing, analysing,
evaluating, negotiating and reviewing different parts of the audit tasks. In order to achieve these
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tasks in a timely manner, audit team members are assigned different tasks according to their
complexity. Therefore, each team member takes on a different role during the audit
engagement. Overall, our participants discuss the roles they played in their audit team
experience as having a hierarchical structure of an Auditor in Charge (AIC) and an Audit
Manager (AM), sometimes with one or several assistants and some include the Tax Specialist
(TS).
All teams revealed that meetings are conducted to plan for the allocation of audit
engagements to all AIC, which is held by the certified auditors at the office. Then audit teams
are either selected by the AIC or a human resource manager at the office until all AIC are
satisfied with the audit teams. The audit tasks are then allocated to the specific audit team roles
and the plans are flexible to incorporate unforeseen changes during the audit engagement
period. The AM of Team 1 describes the role of the AIC and the AM, illustrated in the quote
below;
We first planned the engagement together with the partner, I and the partner planned, then
we had a team planning event. This is how the engagement looks, this is what will be
done, according to the corporate group’s perspective and how we see the engagement…
we pull the conditions for the team, and then we have an examination of the unit and look
at the internal control that is reported… the first meeting is to plan the initiation of the
engagement, to lay down clearly everything from responsibility divisions, audit strategy,
independent questions, things that can be risks. We have obligatory tasks that we always
do, for example independent, stocks, front sections where there can be risks. (AM T1)
Since the role of the AIC is that it gives clear and coordinated instructions about how the audit
engagement is to proceed, literature (Tarakci, Greer, & Groenen, 2015) can interpret that the
role of AIC represents a functionalist power hierarchy. However, this task is collaborated with
the AM including the selection of audit team members for the engagement. It was also
mentioned that they go through instructions that they have received from the primary team,
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which is the team that audits the larger corporate group as a whole. Hence, the AM takes on an
important part of the audit engagement from the beginning, using their knowledge of the audit
team’s skills to match the tasks to the right team member. Knechel et al. (2013) have also found
that skills of the audit team member are matched to the audit task, which suggests that the role
structure mirrors an audit team competence structure. The audit team members’ roles and tasks
are presented in table 2 (below).
(Insert table 2 about here)
Literature (Blader & Chen, 2012) suggests that a dilution of power in work teams
decreases the authoritarian environment, which is said to create a better environment for team
discussion and decision making. The data shows that the power hierarchy may be diluted
between the AIC and AM, because of their collaborative relation. Since team discussion and
decision making is vital to good quality audits, the structure of audit teams that use an AIC and
AM should facilitate a good audit quality.
Proposition 1: Audit teams composed with high competence, availability and development
opportunities will increase audit quality.
The participants discussed how competence, availability and development of the team
member as an auditor are all considered when composing a team. This is illustrated in the quote
below;
We choose the auditor that has the time and can achieve what is needed, industry
knowledge or experience. We want the assistants to have the experience of one step more
before they are suddenly a certified auditor that can sign off on audits, after being an
assistant. I think it will be more of a development to take more responsibility. It is how
they do it at bigger offices with bigger engagements. We want to make it that there will
be three auditors on all client audit engagements, which is an office decision. (AIC T3)
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Therefore, in order to achieve a team with the right competence, availability and chance to
develop, small audit offices have noticed that they need to use the hierarchical structure that
had been recognised in Rich et al.’s (1997) discussion on emerging trends in audit teams. They
found that the AM has become an intermediary role. However, our data shows that AM has
become more than that, they have become a significant role in the execution of the audit. The
need for competence is further explained;
It is a little bit about how well an auditor knows an industry but it is mostly about how
much an auditor has experienced. For this engagement I know that I will be teacher for the
assistant, but when that assistant becomes audit manager and a new assistant comes we
want a manager that has practical audit experience for 3 or 4 years. (AIC T7)
The AM of Team 5 describes availability not just as something that can be troublesome due to
a busy work schedule, but due to the variety of employees at the audit office. Illustrated in the
quote below;
We have only had this sort of team structure for the last two years, because before we
had a lot of well experienced certified auditors and not many assistants. Now we have
taken on more inexperienced assistants so we can take these roles in the team. (AM T5)
This indicates that the trend to change team compositions and roles to a hierarchy only recently
could be due to the lack of diversity in the availability of auditors in a hierarchical structure at
the office. This could be due to the high cost of having a wide variety of auditor skills available
at a small office. Furthermore, another participant described in more detail about how audit
team members may be chosen due to how the team member needs to develop, saying that;
When an auditor assistant is new on the job they take the tasks that they can do and the
tasks develop to become more and more challenging as the assistant develops their
knowledge. (AIC T6)
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Work team literature (Wheelan, 2009) supports the notion that small work teams that contain
about 3 team members will improve productivity, which suggests that the decision made by the
participating audit teams to incorporate a hierarchical structure should have a positive influence
on audit work. Several teams discuss how the workload has increased so they feel that three
team members would be a “more practical size” (AIC T7). Thus, decreased workloads and
increased opportunities for assistant knowledge development seem important. The AIC of
Team 7 describes how they perceive audit hours, saying
We should get the work done in the time set and it is hard to invoice the client for more
hours because it is us that have rotated our employees. So we take that time as an
investment for us. (AIC T7)
This reveals that the audit firm is prepared to take on time debt by accepting that it takes more
hours than they charge the client, so that the audit firm/office can develop and train their
assistants faster. This indicates a short term cost for a long term strategy to improve future audit
quality.
All the teams mentioned that this change to a hierarchical structure had been a recent
decision, and although this vertical hierarchical structure has been implemented the teams work
as a horizontal hierarchy; working with open dialogue and collaborating with all tasks. The
teams suggested that this could be due to a difference in work cultures, one participant saying
that “We don’t stick to the hierarchy like they have maybe in the USA, but we are quite flat
here in Sweden” (AIC T2). Contrary to vertical hierarchy structures, horizontal designs have
been described as teams that exchange information and power is distributed between team
members, whereas a functionalist vertical hierarchical exchange of information creates a
controlled top-down power distribution that can decrease the accuracy of information (Rudolph
& Welker, 1998; Tarakci et al., 2015).
The AIC in Team 5 revealed that in their experience the job has changed over the recent
years, saying that they were “more hands on” before the audit firm started to compose audit
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teams with “more of a pyramid”. Even though the AIC spends less time on the audit tasks, they
perceive the audit teams “have a better structure with the composition we have now”. Hence,
this shows that the amount of AIC participation is not considered an audit quality factor,
contrary to the IAASB’s (2014) audit quality guidelines.
Although all participating audit teams discussed the need for competence, availability and
development opportunities, there were some teams that had a different experience during the
engagement period discussed. For example, Team 1 had been changed for this engagement,
because it was considered a “messy (AM T1)” experience prior to these two years. The team
revealed that competence was most important, but not just the competence of experience. The
engagement required a variety of different competencies due to their business activities. Team
2 also discussed their engagement as a big important client that requires more team members,
which gives the office a chance to develop their less experienced assistants’ knowledge in
different audit tasks.
Hence, audit teams may take on a cost in order to train less experienced team members
and cover the amount of tasks that are required. Since all teams suggest that competence,
availability and development (CAD) opportunities of audit team members are considered when
audit teams are selected, future research could benefit from better understanding the possible
positive relationship between high CAD of various audit team composition structures and audit
quality in order to improve future audit team selections.
Proposition 2: Audit team changes, team size and cost efficiencies can negatively affect audit
team behaviours that may threaten audit quality.
Data revealed that the audit team’s composition structure and selection can influence the
audit teams’ role structure, including the composition changes, team size and cost
considerations. The audit teams’ composition structure can change due to several different
reasons, including competence needs, availability of team members and development
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opportunities of all team members. The participants revealed that audit team changes can cause
problems for the audit team, which include information uncertainty and lowered trust levels.
An information exchange problem has been disclosed by the AM of Team 1, who explained
that;
The transition from one year to the next, if you have the same team or not, effects how
the team functions. I mean that we are an educational organisation, there is a lot of people
that come in and learn a lot and grow in their role and change roles naturally because they
learn. Even if there is the same auditors on the same engagement we may need to
redistribute the roles in the team, which can be a more difficult task than coping with the
size of the team. Changing roles has been something that we have been unsuccessful in.
Who should do what can be unclear when we change. (AM T1)
Thus, the clarity of information exchange during team member changes can be an important
factor that can affect the audit team roles, which in turn may have a negative relation to audit
team outcomes. It is known in audit research literature that auditors can fail to properly
document work, which is a behaviour that can threaten audit quality (Otley & Pierce, 1996;
Svanberg & Öhman, 2013; Sweeney, Pierce, & Arnold, 2013). According to Mannix and Sauer
(2006), when one team member has more information than others and does not reveal all the
information it is an example of a discussion bias. Failing to discuss all relevant information can
be a possible AQTB. On the one hand, information uncertainty can threaten audit quality, but
on the other hand participants revealed that if assistants bring all the information to the AM or
AIC they can delay the audit process and decrease the amount of hours spent on essential audit
tasks, that then decreases audit quality. Therefore, assistants also need to develop the skill about
what to bring to a superior and what is less important, which is something likely to occur with
more years of experience.
Several participants mentioned that AQTBs are more likely to occur when the audit team
is big, stating that failure to properly document work, greater than appropriate reliance on client
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work and acceptance of weak client explanations are the most common AQTBs to occur in big
teams. For example, one participant said;
It can be sometimes that the more you have in the team the more likely that there can be
too much going on and this can lead to things being missed, documents not being recorded
properly in the database at the right step or missing a step. This is maybe connected to the
software tool used. If the team is big then you need to know what you are doing and
connect everything that you do to the auditor in charge so they can review your work.
(AM T7)
The AIC of Team 2 described that the audit team was chosen due to the size of the audit
engagement, saying that “certain people are assigned to the bigger audit engagements”. It was
further explained that the AM was chosen due to their expertise and experience of the
engagement and the assistants were chosen due to their need for experience to develop
knowledge in this particular engagement’s industry. The other manager on Team 2 was chosen
since there were many more difficult tasks to achieve that assistants are not able to do.
Audit team sizes can change, increasing or decreasing in size, so that the composition
structure of the team also changes. This change in team size was explained as something that
can be influenced by the client’s need for more or different competence; the availability of audit
team members, where some may be asked onto another team and some may be on sick leave or
parent leave; and the training development of the audit team member. One participant even
explained that;
The roles differ between teams with 2 or 3 members. When it is just 2 of us the audit
manager takes all responsibility for the review and can ask for my help on some things.
As an audit manager she goes out to the client and takes more responsibility there too.
The audit hours change from being a 2 member team to a 3 member team. It might be that
in the case of this engagement that takes 50 hours, then it would become more like 35
hours and I would be able to decrease my hours. So it is an economic development but
also a chance to develop the auditors too. (AIC T3)
18
Hence, the size of the audit team can influence the role structures in relation to the proportion
of hours allocated to the engagement for each audit team member. Since the AIC is said to cost
about 10 times more than an assistant, audit hours allocated to each audit team member also
plays a part in the composition structure and selection of the team. The AIC of Team 6 revealed
a risk that the reduced amount of time an AIC plays on an audit team can incur on an audit
engagement;
It is led by the economy. Things happen in our world and in other worlds and program
software and methods are developed. The auditors in charge take a little part in the
practical audit work, but instead judge the work of others about 90% of the time and 10%
work with the team. Every time something changes and develops, maybe because I am
older, it becomes less effective. One loses the knack a little to do the practical auditor
work that the manger or assistant does. The less you do the more you forget to do. Then
you might not be as good to judge what others have done. So it is mostly driven from
effectivity. Then when one thinks for the future it is clear that the assistant will soon take
the auditor exam. You think well it goes well with the assistant but they need to be
challenged by something else and not just take the easier tasks and also so they get to
develop their contacts. Then with the team leader (AM) if they want to take on their own
audits there needs to be enough time to train up someone else to take over as audit
manager. (AIC T6)
Team 4 also discussed how the assistants are encouraged to develop their own portfolio of
clients before they take the certification exam, in order to prepare for their future at the office.
Keeping costs low can help the less experienced to develop their audit skills, but more
experienced auditors get less opportunities to develop their practical audit skills which can
decrease their audit abilities. This suggest that there is a convex relation between the ability of
an auditor to do the audit tasks and the experience of the auditor. This result could have a
negative effect on audit quality if the AIC’s practical audit skills are considered vital for high
audit quality. However, it could also have a positive effect on audit quality if the composition
19
structures of audit teams that use the AM and assistants to conduct the most part of the audit
and enable such a dynamic to exist without harming the quality of the audit. Since there are
indications of both positive and negative effects of team changes, team size and cost
efficiencies, future research could investigate these possible relations on the quality of the audit
to better understand when audit quality may be influenced positively or negatively by these
audit team experiences.
Proposition 3: The amount of distance and access between the role of the AIC and the role of
the audit team can influence audit quality.
Team 1’s role structure revealed that the AIC was hard to contact and was situated at a
different audit office than the rest of the audit team. Also, recent changes to the audit team on
this engagement meant that the AM did not have as much experience and knowledge about the
engagement as the assistants on the team. One assistant explained;
This was the first year that the audit manager had worked on this audit engagement, so I
was the most senior on the team that had worked on the audit engagement before, except
the partner that is the auditor in charge. So I was at the meeting at the end of the last audit
and so I had a bit more information about the client and the previous year accounts, which
the team needed. So my role was, if you compare to the average team where the audit
manager has relatively more responsibility, it was more divided between me and the audit
manager in this case. It can be a challenge to come into a new role. It can be whole
different responsibility. (S3 T1)
This senior assistant suggested that the AIC was barely involved with the practical audit work
and considered themselves to have more responsibility then the job position usually requires.
Other participants also revealed that they could experience challenging changes to their job
responsibilities, but where some felt this challenge was a positive experience others suggested
that it could be stressful or too hard on occasion. Therefore, not all AMs had a positive
20
experience when their AIC was not situated at their office nor easy to contact. One participant
pointed out that;
Each certified auditor differs in that they meddle at different levels. The auditor in charge
in this team meddles the least, but the others meddle more. You (AIC T4) often just say
that will do. It’s an individual’s wishes for control. (AM T4)
The amount of hours the AIC of Team 3 allocates to the engagement is described as a control
of information uncertainty issue, explaining that;
If someone has not worked so long then I make sure that I control for their work but if
someone has worked for a longer time, like 10 years, I might review the work but maybe
not as much as a new comer (AIC T3)
Thus, this AIC judges how much they can trust the information they receive from the assistants
and allocates the time needed to do review checks. According to Tomkins’(2001) analysis on
trust in accounting firms, trust levels should increase when closer relations are built and
information uncertainty is decreased between team members as well as the team and client.
Hence, how well an AIC can build trust relations with the audit team may influence the amount
of information uncertainty and the quality of the audit.
Since there was a certain amount of uncertainty in the information exchanged between
team members about the audit engagement in Team 1’s experience, it suggests the roles
between the team and the AIC requires collaboration and trust. Trust is considered to be
something that develops over time and can be at its lowest when a team is newly formed (Power,
1996; Tomkins, 2001), which indicates the need for control in order to decrease information
uncertainty and therefore a high proportion of audit hours from the AIC held accountable. On
the one hand, the AIC in Team 1 and Team 2 did not spend many hours with the team, which
indicates less control, higher information uncertainty and a threat to audit quality. On the other
hand, high trust between team members could strengthen how the team’s role structure
functions to decrease information uncertainty and increase audit quality, if time is given to build
21
the necessary trust level.
Teams 3 to 8 all had an AIC that was situated at the same office as the audit team and
most of the teams described the AIC as easy to contact and collaborative, as well as having an
open-door policy for AMs and assistants. Furthermore, all AIC participants spoke confidently
of their AMs, one participant saying they know that the quality of the audit is good “if my audit
manager is satisfied, then it is good work” (AIC T5). This suggests that the AIC highly trusts
the AM and that the AM’s quality control is higher than that of the AIC that is held accountable
for the audit.
Hence, the relation between the roles of the AIC and the audit team with audit quality
could be influenced by the distance and accessibility between the AIC and the audit team. If the
AIC is close and accessible for the audit team it may have a positive influence on audit quality,
but if the AIC is far from the audit team and less accessible it may have a negative influence on
audit quality. However, trust that is built between the AIC and the audit team could lead to a
decrease in information uncertainty and mitigate any negative influence on audit quality when
the audit team is distant and has less access to the AIC.
Proposition 4: The varied job positions an Audit Manager can hold will influence audit quality
Perhaps the most surprising result the interview data revealed was that Audit Managers
(AM) can hold different job positions at the audit firm, including only having two years of
experience as an assistant. For example, audit teams 3-5, 7 and 8 had AMs with experience
ranging from 2 to 3, 5 years at their audit firms and had already been given the responsibility
of organising, client relations and quality control, as well as conducting about 75-90% of the
audit tasks, and managing others on the audit teams. Since the AMs are given the opportunity
to develop their client relations skills as well as technical audit review tasks, it suggests that the
audit team is able to potentially increase trust between the client and audit team due to more
hours spent by the AM consulting with the client than just the AIC.
22
Most AMs described this experience as a positive challenge saying they find that the
opportunity to develop a better understanding of the clients’ business activities is most
motivating. One participant mentioned “I don’t need to communicate plans because it is me
that then does the tasks” (AM T3), which suggest that they also find the role as AM as more
efficient. One participant explained that;
In the future the more experienced auditor will need to move on to more challenging
engagements and might be certified and then the same for the newer assistant. Then we
need to bring in more new assistants. The first two years they work as assistant and then
the next 2, 3 or 4 years they can work as managers. It is often that assistants work longer
as managers to learn more about the job before they take the CPA exam. (AIC T8)
Another AIC also described this as a positive challenge that develops competence saying
that;
In a big office like Stockholm a new assistant might look at the same thing on every
engagement they have, but here you get to look at different things so it can be a bit more
fun for the new assistants (AIC T5).
Therefore, training the assistants in such a challenging role as AM is seen as a positive
motivation. The AIC of Team 6 describes the AM role, illustrated in the quote below;
The audit manager has a very important role and this engagement is also quality
controlled internally since 2012. This can be as hard work as having a quality control
from the Supervisory Board of Public Accountants in Sweden. An important part of that
is having the audit manager who takes care of the things that need to be taken care of, like
the list of requirements. Also that the other team members do their work right. (AIC T6)
Since the IAASB (2014) suggest that a high quality audit includes a rigorous quality control
procedure of the execution of an audit engagement, the role of the AM is a very important role
in relation to the outcome of the audit engagement. The quote above reveals that the AIC
respects the AM role and since this AM has been the AM for several years, it also indicates a
23
certain level of trust that must have been reached between this AIC and AM. An audit team that
can respect and trust one another are more likely to speak their opinion and give constructive
criticism (Liang, Shih, & Chiang, 2015; Roberge & van Dick, 2010), which may be a positive
influence on audit quality.
The participants revealed that those who take the role as leader can differ between audit
teams. According to Hackman (2004), the leadership role is said to be the team member that
influences others to follow the team’s goal. Therefore, even though the AIC may take on the
accountability of signing the audit report, the AM may take the leadership role. The IAASB
(2014) guidelines on audit quality may suggest that if the AIC plays too little a role in the audit
team engagement review it could lead to an audit quality risk, due to the audit receiving less
influence from the AIC’s experience and knowledge. However, literature about power in teams
suggests that if the leader of a team does not hold the most power in the team then the team will
function better than if the leader is also the power holder (Tost et al., 2013). Hence there is
support for the audit firms’ use of AM as audit team leader. Strong leadership is a well proven
way to create team cohesion (Forsyth, 2000, Nelson et al., 2016), which may be a strength in
the AMs.
However, some may see this as a potential situation where accuracy of information may
be decreased (IAASB, 2014), due to the less experienced assistant as role of AM. The AIC of
teams 1, 2 and 4 are partners, consequently costs and/or a busy schedule could explain why
they took less of a role in their audit engagements. Although the cost efficiencies of using the
hierarchical structure (Rich et al., 1997) of less AIC hours and more assistant hours are
understandable, the risk of decreasing accuracy of information is likely to be increased when a
less experience assistant is given charge of the audit and audit team as the important role of
AM. Hence, a study on how audit quality can vary due to the variation of job positions an AM
can hold could reveal more about the possible negative influence that using an assistant as AM
has on audit quality.
24
Proposition 5: An audit team’s social status perception can influence the way the team behaves
and threaten the quality of the audit.
A Tax Specialist (TS) was included in Team 1 and 2 and (TS) was considered a team
member, but Team 3-8 say that the TS is not a member of the team. The AIC of Team 4 revealed
that “In other engagements there might be a tax specialist that is seen as part of the audit and
not a consultant due to the nature of the business”. Therefore, the participants of this study have
different perceptions of who is on the audit team and thus what an audit team is considered to
encompass.
The TS explained how their role works in the tax team in Sweden, which describes the
tax team as a specialist team with the same vertical hierarchical structure of reviews of the tax
accounts. The tax partner external to the audit team is accountable for the final judgement of
tax items, but the TS is responsible to the audit team in playing a part in the whole audit team
process. The TS that participated in this study stated that they prioritise the audit team over all
others (See table 2), including the client, shareholders and regulators. This suggest that the TS
perceives the audit quality as most important for everyone on the audit team to indicate the
success of the audit team, not just the quality of financial statements of the client.
As the TS takes a bigger role in the audit team, their status as an audit firm employee also
rises, since specialist knowledge is required to achieve a high quality audit. For example, the
TS explains their relationship with their audit teams;
We keep in contact continuously with all the clients we work together on, because we need
to discuss what effects the client nationally and internationally internally and externally
from the client. For example, changes in the personnel or financial effects in the industry
internationally. So we have quite a close cooperation and keep ourselves updated about
what happens around in the whole business environment. It might not be that it is a tax
question but we will still discuss it with each other. It can affect the essential factors that
25
we need to look at during the audit engagement. For example, if the client has had a shortfall
we can question the prognosis they have given that can affect their economic outlook. We
always talk about this with the audit team before we talk to the client. Everyone knows that
I am the tax specialist and that that is my role. The big clients understand that too, but
smaller companies can think that everyone that works at the company are auditors. The
better the company is the earlier the company comes to me with questions first. (TS T1&2)
The TS perceived their status on the team as very high (See table 2). Social Role Theory
proposes that status is dependent on other team member perceptions and these perceptions and
status roles can affect team behaviours and performance (Mannix & Sauer, 2006). Hence, the
evidence we have seen shows that different audit teams perceive the TS in a different way,
which gives the TS a varied status in audit teams across different audit firms and can therefore
effect how the TS behave between different teams.
If a TS, like the participant in this study, is given an appreciated status then they may
collaborate and add more to the quality of the audit. For example, the TS revealed that;
If I compare myself to those who work in the south at bigger offices then I feel like I am
more part of the team because they do their own part and report to the team, whereas I like
to go to the client with the team and discuss questions with the team and the client, rather
than write lots of emails. So that is why I am more part of the team in that way. It can work
more effectively this way than to correspond via mail.
However, misplaced high status perceptions can also cause unproductive team behaviours, such
as social loafing (Forsyth, 2000) and distrust (Tomkins, 2001). One example of this could be
the assistant that was AM in Team 3 that said they sometimes work on more routine work as
an assistant when they are on a big audit team, which is less fun than the challenge of working
as an AM. If an audit team member experiences a contradicting status in different teams, audit
quality may decrease due to a reluctance to the audit team work and less satisfaction with the
audit team tasks. Tomkins (2001) found evidence to suggest that status could be an influential
26
factor in the context of the trust and information uncertainty relation between accounting
employees. Furthermore, as team literature has found (Alnuaimi, Robert Jr., & Maruping, 2010;
Aubé, Rousseau, & Tremblay, 2011), dissatisfaction in teams can lead to dysfunctional
behaviours, which suggests that audit teams risk the quality of the audit when assistants are
given different roles and therefore a different status position in the audit team.
Discussion and Conclusion
Audit judgement and decision making research has found different effects of audit tasks,
interactions between staff and individual’s attributes on audit judgements, assessments,
decisions, modifications and evaluations (Nelson & Tan, 2005; Rich et al., 1997). The results
of this research contributes to previous literature by reporting qualitative evidence on how audit
team hierarchical composition structures are selected and why input factors such as team size
and team member changes might influence the audit process. It also contributes to our
understanding of how and why audit team role structures influence the audit process. More
specifically our results find support for the importance of understanding trust relations in audit
teams (Pentland, 1993; Power, 1996) by showing that trust in audit teams is an important
influence on how audit team role structure functions well, especially between the AIC and AM.
Figure 2 (below) summarizes our key findings on audit team composition and role
structure in the light of two important building blocks of Knechel et al.’s (2013) audit quality
framework, namely audit input and process. As far as audit team input is concerned, we find
that audit team composition is typically structured by selection considerations of audit team
member competence, availability, and development. In addition, the composition of the team is
also influenced by costs, team size and team changes. Next, we find that the audit team process
is influenced by audit team inputs, and most noteworthy in this context is the important role of
the AM that is typically played by an assistant. Furthermore, the audit team role structures are
27
influenced by the level of trust between team members, which may also be influenced by the
status relations between roles.
Figure 2: Key findings of relevant audit team input and process factors
AUDIT TEAM INPUTS
AUDIT TEAM PROCESS
Composition Structure
 Competence
 Availability
 Development/Training
Costs
Team size
Team member changes
Role Structure




Collaboration/interrelations
Distance
Trust
Status
Audit Outcomes
The main conclusions are described in more detail. First, we find that audit team
composition structures can vary due to the auditors’ different audit, client and specialisation
experience as well as having varied job positions. This means that the team compositions can
be selected because the audit team member has a different experience background that is
deemed necessary for the specific audit engagement or to help the team member develop new
experiences. For example, Team 1 chose 3 assistants due to their varied background experience
that was required for the audit engagement, whereas team 5 chose the assistant as AM because
they knew each other, and the other assistants needed the training in this audit engagement, and
Team 7 chose the assistant because they were available. It was also revealed that audit teams
are selected either by the AIC (Team 1-4) or by a resource manager outside of the team (Teams
5-8), which explains how the audit team is composed. Some teams differed in their explanations
for why specific composition structures were selected, including AIC requests, audit team
choices, and client relations. However, the most common factors that emerged from the
interviews was that selecting an audit team is influenced by the competence, availability and
the development of audit team members.
28
Competence was described as the most important factor, since specific expertise or the
chance to have a diverse set of expertise was often revealed. Availability of audit team members
was explained as an office level human resource factor that meant that schedule clashes can
influence the choice of an audit team member to select or be selected on a team. Audit teams
have only recently functioned like the “emerging trends” in audit team described in Rich et
al.’s (1997a) research, which suggest that it was not considered necessary in small offices and
that there has been a lack of available variety among audit team members to form a hierarchical
structure. Development of audit team members was described as an audit firm cost that is
considered in order to improve audit quality for future audit engagements. Therefore, future
research could develop our understanding of the relations between audit team competence,
availability and development on audit outcomes.
Second, results found that the selection of audit team members for an engagement is
influenced by team member changes, team size needs and cost efficiencies. Most teams pointed
out that changes in team members can lead to uncertainty and lower trust levels, however it was
also noted that team changes can lead to new perspectives and the identification of different
essential items necessary for review in order to decrease the audit risk. All teams recognised
that when team size changes the roles of the audit team can change as well. Moreover, bigger
teams may lead to an increase in AQTBs, which is supported by the research of Alnuaimi et al.
(2010) and Aubé et al. (2011). Future research could investigate the relation between team
changes, team size and AQTBs or other audit outcomes in order to better understand the effect
on audit team work.
Third, evidence revealed that some AIC team members were located at different offices
to the rest of the audit team, which has led to less access to the AIC and more work placed on
the AM and the rest of the audit team. While some assistants remarked that this can have a
negative influence on the team’s work others have suggested that they can be trusted in what
they know and what they need help with during the audit. Hence, this indicates that trust built
29
between the AIC and audit team can mitigate the possible negative influence that distance
between AIC and audit team may have on audit quality. Future research could investigate this
association further.
Fourth, notwithstanding the well know vertical hierarchical structure in audit firms our
findings related to role structure indicate the presence of horizontal role structures in the
execution of the audit engagement. In the majority of the interviewed teams the AM took on
the role of leader and the most important audit team member managing the audit execution and
dealing with quality control issues, even though the AMs were (only) assistants. This was
explained as a positive factor because it allows the assistant to develop client relations and
his/her knowledge. Many AMs also perceived this as a positive challenge that motivates them.
The use of horizontal open discussion in teams with collaborative interrelations and trust like
those represented in all the teams in this study is also supported by organisational literature
(Harrison et al., 1998; Liang et al., 2015; Roberge & van Dick, 2010). In addition, effective
interaction as an audit quality factor is supported by the IAASB’s (2014) guidelines on audit
quality.
The training stages and certification of auditors, and the accountability role of AIC
indicates that team vertical hierarchical structures are an inherent part of the audit industry
culture, however the AMs of all teams are able to dilute the power hierarchy, take on the status
of leader and create a horizontal approach to execute the audit process. This is supported by
conflict power theory where discussion is open and encouraged (Tarakci et al., 2015). It is also
supported by the literature on Trust (Tomkins, 2001) that has shown that building close relations
can interact with the decrease of information uncertainty and increase of trust. Therefore, it is
possible that even though all the teams described the hierarchical structure as a vertical power
from AIC down to assistant, the development of the assistants’ client relation skills at an early
stage in the engagement could also have a positive effect on audit quality. However, less AIC
hours on an audit could indicate negative audit quality, since experience and certification is
30
suggested for a good audit quality by the IAASB (2014) guidelines. Hence, future research
could better understand how audit quality can vary due to the variation of job positions an AM
can hold.
Finally, our results show that the teams’ social status was perceived as relatively high by
almost all interviewees and could be an influential factor in the context of the trust and
information uncertainty relation discussed in Tomkins (2001). The definition of what an audit
team is can vary between audit teams and audit firms due to how they perceive the TS’ role,
which means that audit firm employees of Team 1 and 2 compared to Teams 3-8 do not
recognise an audit team in the same manner. There is also evidence that when an assistant plays
the role of AM and then junior assistant in a different team there is a conflict in the audit teams’
status perceptions that may influence audit team behaviour and threaten the quality of the audit.
Thus, the data supports Bauer and Estep’s (2015) qualitative results that identity status may
influence audit quality and suggests that future research could investigate the relation between
audit team status and audit quality by conducting an experiment or a larger scale survey that
can account for how trust may interact with this relation.
Furthermore, if audit firm employees have a varied perspective of what an audit team is
then they may have a varied perspective about how an audit team functions and why the audit
team is functioning. The data also shows audit teams have varied goals (see table 1). The lack
of a common recognition of audit team goals can lead to a varied outcome. Therefore, defining
how audit employees perceive the audit team and its goals as an audit team process factor can
help unravel how audit teams influence audit quality (outcomes). Future research could
therefore investigate different variations between audit teams. Perhaps by using Harrison and
Klein’s (2007) study on variety, separation and disparity that discuss differences in knowledge,
values and status within teams, audit research could further develop an understanding of how
this may influence audit quality.
31
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35
ROLE STRUCURE
COMPOSITION STRUCTURE
Appendix:
Table 1
Teams
Engagement
1
Few million
(SEK) part of
large corporate
group
2
Couple hundred
million (SEK)
part of large ICG
Job Position
Partner
Manager
3 Seniors
Tax
Team Size
Office Size
(Employees)
Office
Location
6
60
Partner
Senior M.
Manager
2 Assistants
Tax & VAT
7
60/25/20
Gender
4 Male
2 Female
Roles
AIC
AM
3 Assistants
Tax
Status
2 High
2 Medium
Low
3 = Shareholder
1 = Firm
1= Team
Goal
Town 1
3
30 million
manufacturing 30
employed part of
ICG
Swedish owner
Senior M.
Assistant
4
50 million
(SEK)
25 employees
3 owners
5
Large international
car company
several million (SEK)
6
215 million (SEK)
car company
7
85 million (SEK)
25 employees
this region
8
60 million (SEK)
3 companies
20 years at audit firm
Partner
Assistant
Partner
Senior M.
2 Assistants
Senior M./ Director
Manager
Assistant
Senior M./ Director
2 Assistants
Senior M.
2 Assistants
2
9
2
9
4
17
3
17
3
17
3
17
Town 1
Town 2
Town 3
3 Male
3 Female
1?
Town 1
Town 1
Town 2
Town 1
Town 1
Town 2
1 Male
1 Female
1 Male
1 Female
1 Male
2 Female
1?
1 Male
1 Female
1?
3 Male
2 Male
1 Female
AIC
AM
Manager
2 Assistants
Tax
3 High
1 Medium
AIC
AM
AIC
AM
AIC
AM
2 Assistants
AIC
AM
Assistant
AIC
AM
AIC
AM
Assistant
2 High
2 High
1 High
1 Medium
1 High
1 High
1 Medium
2 High
2 = Client
1 = Shareholder
1 = Team
1= Regulator
1 = Client
1=
Shareholder
1 = Client
1 = Wider Society
1= Other
1= Other
1= No response
1 = Client
1 = Other
1 = Shareholder
1= Other
Table 2:
Role
Structure
Team 1
AIC
AM
Assistant
Specialist
Audit
Hours
80 h
Proportion of
hours
Job Tasks
< team members
< Senior assistants
Competence
(Experience
Years)
8
100 h
7-30 h
(about 10)
Most amount
S3-responsibility divided between me & AM
- Coordinate tax questions
-Follow industry & company activities
- Advice the CFO about tax concerns
- End of year accounts
2-4
5
Team 2
AIC
35h
Mostly out at the
client 10%
18
AM
80h
25%
Assistant
100h
65%
-Client relations
-Start-up meeting
-Team planning event
-Decide with others on financial problems
- Plan on site work
-Reports to primary team
-Manager difficult tasks
-others easier tasks
Specialist
Team 3
AIC
20-60 h
30h
50%
AM
30 h
50%
Team 4
AIC
20h
20%
AM
Team 5
AIC
30h
80%
40 h
16%
AM
Assistant
100 h
100 h
42%
42%
Team 6
AIC
AM
(10 h)
(>50 h)
10% of 100 hours
More than half
Team 7
AIC
(12,5 h)
25% of 50 hours
AM
(37,5 h)
75% of 50 hours
Team 8
AIC
AM
40 h
40 h
50%
50%
17
2
5
-Review others work
-The more experience of others the less control review I do
-make risk judgments
-write reports
-contact client
-I don’t need to communicate plans because it is me that then
does the tasks
7
-Compose team
-Client contact
15
2
2
-Essential questions
-Contact Client
-Planning
-Ongoing contact with AM
most of the tasks at the client
-Review all the items that I could
-Later on as I learnt more I took on more difficult items that
were more challenging for me
-List of requirements
-That the other team members do their work right
-takes the overall role
-the essential items
-Everything else
-take the tasks that they can do
-tasks develop to challenge & develop
-I now do a lot more on my own
-take care of the work after we have visited the client
-make sure that the database is up to date, that yearly reports are
reviewed by both myself and the other assistant
-I make sure that the work is done.
4
10
2
15
9
15
3,5
8
2,5