An accounting consultation unit (ACU) is an organizational unit of a public
accounting firm that has a mandate to assist practice office partners in making
the difficult judgments relating to financial statements of the firm's clients
(Salterio 1994; Danos and Boley 1980). These judgments include the following:
(a) accounting policy selection when there is a choice in current standards
or no standard exists; (b) measurement and valuation alternatives; and (c) disclosure
requirements. Disagreements between ACU partners and practice office
partners are normally resolved at the highest levels of the audit firm (e.g., the
national managing partner). External observers of public accounting firms have
indicated increasing discomfort with public accounting firms advocating apparently
different accounting policies for similar factual situations in interactions
with regulators (Schuetze 1994; Shah 1996). Some regulators believe the ACU
has the potential to be a key player in reducing such apparent differences
through better research (Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) 1996). Indeed,
the OSC (the largest public company regulator in Canada) suggests that "failure
to consult such individuals {ACUpartners) beforehand may result in delays
in resolving issues." (1-348, italics added). This suggestion implies the potential
for additional costs for companies if consultation is not done (or it is done
poorly) along with the consequent loss of auditor reputation should problems
arise. Therefore, understanding the policies and practices of ACUs, and the
extent of differences among firms (if any), is important for assessing the relative
ability of different public accounting firms to respond to consultation issues.
Despite the potentially pervasive, behind the scenes, influence of ACUs,
they are only rarely mentioned in the accounting and auditing research literature.
Danos, Eichenseher, and Holt (1989) found that local office partners
rarely consult the ACU, but when they do, they consider it a very important
source of information in their decision making. Schultz and Reckers (1981)
showed that ACU-like advice affected audit partner judgments on accounting
disclosures. Gibbins and Swieringa (1995) suggested that ACUs may be an
overlooked source of data for accounting research on recognition, measurement,
and disclosure issues. Yet none of these researchers have described the
ACU or considered if different organizational forms might lead to differential
effectiveness.' The major goals of this paper include describing ACUs more
extensively and providing an initial analysis of them from a theoretical perspective.
We begin by providing a description of the ACUs for the largest five firms
in Canada. This description was developed from a program of semistructured
interviews at both the national and the local office levels, walkthroughs of actual
consultations with the partners and managers involved in those consultations,
and an examination of the audit firm manuals. We introduce the concept
of organization memory and make an argument that an ACU is an important
source of a public accounting firm's organizational memory. The ACUs are
then analyzed through the theoretical lens provided by organizational memory
theory.