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.