abstract
While some research suggests that explicit incentives to meet time budgets have recently
been reduced at audit firms, there is also evidence indicating that audit seniors and staff
still feel at least implicit pressure to meet budgets. We examine the possibility that both
of these findings tell a part of the story. Specifically, we explore whether, and under what
conditions, seniors and staff are implicitly encouraged to underreport time through future
engagement staffing decisions and the performance evaluation process. Further, we consider
the extent to which agency theory can serve as a framework for understanding
how the incentives of audit managers and partners influence how they view underreporting
by their engagement staff. We place participants in a scenario in which they are
responsible for evaluating an engagement senior who appears to have worked more hours
than were budgeted. We manipulate the senior’s reporting accuracy (underreporting versus
accurate reporting) and the desirability of the client (more versus less desirable). We find
that, whenmanagers’ agency-related incentives conflict more strongly with those of the firm
(more desirable client), they tend to tacitly encourage underreporting through their evaluations
of the senior’s performance. Managers are also more likely to request an underreporter
on a future engagement. In contrast, partners placed in the same setting show no evidence of
encouraging underreporting. Thus, our results suggest that managers’ tacit encouragement
of underreporting is contrary to what the ‘‘principals’’ of the firm (i.e., partners) appear to
want. Further, while firms may have reduced their emphasis on formal, explicit incentives
to underreport, it appears likely that implicit manager incentives persist.