ââIt is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive,â it states. âConcerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable.â The responsibility of a university, it concludes, is not only to promote âfearless freedom of debateâ, but also to protect it.â Source: The Economist
/ in English
How the business press stabilizes and destabilizes notions of audit failure
The eternal audit expectations gap is never as pronounced as when a company suddenly collapses or when a company announces significant restatements of, or errors in, its financial accounts. In these cases the auditor is dragged out of the shadows and asked why s/he didnât warn investors and other stakeholders of what was, or was likely, to come. Auditors will here refer to materiality levels and audit standards as a defense, while the accusing users of the audit will refer to the âpromisesâ of the auditâi.e., that the auditor will provide assurance to managementâs assertions. These discussions are never fully settled. Only when the auditor loses in courtâwhich very rarely happensâdo we approach a settlement of whether the audit was a failure or not. Still, even though the issue is never completely settled the discussion of whether a contested audit was a failure or not nevertheless tend to stabilize over time. But how does that happen?
Building on material I collected for my dissertation I haveâtogether with Gustav Johedâexplored this very question, focusing on the role of the media in this process. The result of this exploration is documented as a chapter in Josef Pallas, Lars StrannegĂĽrd and Stefan Jonssonâs anthology Organizations and the Media: Organizing in a Mediatized World.[1] What we found was, as expected, that media play an important role in stabilizing notions of audit failure. But we also found that it is much too simplistic to equate this important role with the media acting as judges over the auditâs fate as a âsuccessâ or failure. Instead, we found a much more complex process in which many different actors took part. Sure, the business press had an influence over other actors but so did a number of these actors have over the business press. To bring some analytical order to the process we observedâthe debate about the quality of the audit of the financial services firm Intrum Justitia, which in 2003 had to disclose errors in the financial reports due to faults in the accounts of its British subsidiaryâwe propose three main roles for the media based on patterns observed in the studied material.
First, we notice the (rather obvious) role of the media as an instigator of opinions and propositions. By choosing which stories to publish, the setting of headlines, and through editorials and opinion pieces the media is in a good position to influence the opinions of others that matter. We call this role, the agency role. In the case explored in this study we found the business press to be rather tough in its rhetoric in headlines and so on but at the same time rather restrained in its factual claims and blames. This, we did not have the opportunity to explore in any depth in this book chapter. It would however be interesting to see further analysis about how the style of media reporting affects propositions such as whether an audit is a failure or not. This notwithstanding, whether or not the media have any impact at all depend on how their propositions are taken up by later users.
Second, the business press can play a role as something that other actors âuseâ and refer to. When the propositions of the business press are picked up by relevant others, the media acts (makes a difference)[2]. We call this role the actor role. Although, it is probably fair to assume that if the business press is to have a role as an actor they must first take an agency role, i.e., publish something, it is worth notice that the absence of the media in the debate could act too. It is always difficult proving a negative and yet, calling for audit failure in the absence of a media debate is probably an uphill battle. Here too, further investigation is warranted.
Third, we found that the media can be used as not only a bat with which to beat down competing arguments or make ones own position more pungent, the media can also be used as, well, a medium. We call this role the arena role. Here, the media serves as a platform for other actors to get their message across. With this we do not imply that the media should be neutral or impartial. What gets printed is after all ultimately in the hands of the business press. Nevertheless, the business press is an important amplifier of other actorsâ voices and, as far as we can tell from a one case analysis, the media is more interested in debates and selling copies (advertising) than promoting a specific argument about an auditâs status as a failure or not.[3]
With this study we do not suggest that we have found a solution for the eternal audit expectations gap. There are good reasons to expect that this gap will not only prevail but be sustained and even maintained.[4] What we do suggest is, however, that this study shed some light on how this gap in local and situated cases of alleged audit failures is sufficiently bridged to stabilize the notion of the audit as a failure or not.
- Carrington, T. and Johed, G. (2014). How the Business Press Stabilizes and Destabilizes Notions of Audit Failure: The Case of Intrum Justitia, in Pallas, J., StrannegĂĽrd, L. and Jonsson, S. (eds) Organizations and the Media: Organizing in a Mediatized World, pp. 116â131, Routledge.  âŠ
- Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press.  âŠ
- This is, of course, another way in which the business press acts, in a Latorian sense. Still, the purpose in this paper is to draw attention to the ways the business press mediates in the stabilizing and destabilizing of notions of audit failure and not to conduct a full-blown Actor-Network Theory analysis. Hence, we chose the risk of being accused of theoretical inconsistency for what we consider to be gains in rhetorical clarity. Yes, the business press acts when assuming the arena role, but it does so in an interestingly different way.  âŠ
- Power, M. (1997). The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford University Press.  âŠ
Papers 3: it’s getting better
There are still some bugs in my, nonetheless, favourite article and reference manager Papers 3. Most notable is the reading list which seems great in principleâit even sync to the web nowâbut in practice is rather useless as, more often than not, it simply refuses to add new papers to the list. However, as a paper manager it is now really good. Syncing works, including annotations which now follow the paper between the devises (although free hand written notes is still not two wayâbut that is apparently in the works). Highlighting have been improved and the reading experience on both the iPad and the Mac is rather pleasant. What I haven’t done in a while is using Papers as a writing reference program Ă la Endnote. (Presently, I add and manage my references manually.) But maybe it is nowtime to go all in on Papers 3.
From Die Luft der Freiheit weht to Tänka fritt är stort men tänka rätt är stÜrre
Mottoes…
Nevertheless, after six months in northern California the winds of freedom will now blow me back to Uppsala where to think freely is considered great but thinking right is even greater.
Auf wiedersehen Stanford!
Papers 3: still disappointing
“I finally decided to give it a full try by importing my Papers2 library and starting to write with help of Papers3. So far I am sorry to report significant disappointment and regret. The version is still too buggy.” (Academic workflows on a Mac)
I agree. Sad. So much potential here.
Source: http://blog.macademic.org/2014/03/29/papers-3-still-disappointing/
An empirical test of the hierarchical construct of professionalism and managerialism in the accounting profession (updated)
Update 2013-11-13: The text has been updated to reflect the fact that the article is now published
Research into the tension between professionalism and commercialism in the accounting profession is inconclusive and warrants greater attention. How to conceptualize and measure these constructs are thus pressing concerns. Using questionnaire data from 1646 auditors in Sweden, and applying confirmatory factor analysis and structural regression models within a structural equation modeling framework to a measurement model developed by Suddaby et al. (2009), we find little empirical evidence for the existence of the two logics of professionalism and managerialism (i.e., commercialism) as two higher-order latent constructs shared by auditors. However, we find that two sub-elements of the proposed higher-order constructs do discriminate between each other in a way that could indicate two exclusive value statements in the accounting profession connected to the professionalism-commercialism tension: these are the respective emphases on independence enforcement and client commitment.
This is the abstract to the first article we* publish based on a survey sent to all 3.999 chartered (and registered) auditors in Sweden. I am of course happy to see it in press print** but also a little curious as to its reception. On the hand these kinds of papers can always be dismissed with arguments such as “well of course you didn’t find any correlations – you asked the wrong questions!”. On the other hand: that is kind of our point! We went through great pains to replicate the state of the art in this type of research, just because of this. There is never any “right” or “wrong” questions. What we wanted to know is whether, the model as suggested by Suddaby et al. (2009), can produce valid result with these kinds of methods. Hence, I don’t buy these kinds of dismissals.
On a more positive note I really hope this article will challenge some of the best minds in audit researchâfrom both sides of the quantitative/qualitative divideâto think anew concerning the tensions between commercialism and professionalism. We make some suggestions in the paper but I think there is potential for some really interesting work, seeking to understand what it means to be a professional auditor and how this interplays with demands on the auditor to also be commercially successful.
The article “An empirical test of the hierarchical construct of professionalism and managerialism in the accounting profession” is found at http://dx.doi.org/10.2308/bria-50511.
* Thomas Carrington, Tobias Johansson, Gustav Johed, and Peter Ăhman.
* * Carrington, T., Johansson, T., Johed, G., and Ăhman, P. (2013.) An empirical test of the hierarchical construct of professionalism and managerialism in the accounting profession. Behavioral Research in Accounting, In-PressVol. 25, No. 2, pp. 1-20.
Keeping up appearances
Recently it was brought to my attention that a conference paper of mine is the third most viewed “publication” in the Uppsala University library database DiVA. This, I have to admit, made me a little embarrassed. Because, people kept congratulating me for this thing, which I could neither understand nor explain. I was completely bewildered why this “work in progress” would be the text that, out of all the things I have written, would get the most attention. I quickly realised that my only real choicesâif I did not want to continue the “I don’t know” mantra at the risk of looking stupid for not knowing, or lazy for not finding outâwere to either just smile and try to keep up the appearance that this conference paper was some kind of master piece or to go to the bottom of this mystery and try to find at least a partial explanation for the paper’s popularity. The choice was of course easy. How could I not want to know?
First of all it is worth noting that the database entry is the third most “viewed” on DiVA. This is an important distinction because the paper is not downloadable. (A later published version of the paper can be downloaded from Elsevier but this conference paper version can’t.) On the other hand, there is no way of knowing that the paper is not downloadable when it appears in the list of search results so from that perspective the distinction is not important. What is important is to be clear about that very few people have actually read the conference paper. That a lot of people have clicked on the link to the database entry for the paper in the list of DiVA search results does hence not mean that we can draw any conclusions about the quality of the paper.
In fact, I would submit that the conference paper is not that particularly good. Although I think the empirical parts of the paper are OK, I am not especially proud of the theoretical parts of the conference paper. Fortunately the published version of the paper is much better. The paper is published as An analysis of the demands on a sufficient audit: Professional appearance is what counts! and can be found in Critical Perspectives on Accounting Vol. 21, No. 8, pp. 669-682. As of december 2012 the journal article is cited by one other paper according to Scopus, and by seven other sources by the more generous Google Scholar. And although only three years have passed since its publicationâand it hence is not impossible that a flood of references are still to comeâI do not expect the journal article to be referenced in anyway nearly similar numbers to the conference paper. The mystery is not why the journal article is not referenced in the thousands but why the conference paper has been viewed so ridiculously often.
So, how can the popularity of the database entry in Uppsala University’s library catalog DiVA be explained? Well, if one search Google for the title (or parts of the title) of the paper not much shows up. This tell us that the answer has something to do with the content of the database rather than the subject or the title as such. Actually, the story of this database entry tell us a lot about the state of audit research in Uppsala, and Sweden more generally, as one soon finds that there is not much of it in this database. Hence, supply is scarce. Simultaneously, demand is apparently high. And in particular demand is high for studies of “low audit quality”. A search for “low audit quality” (in december 2012) result in five hits. Mine is at the top. Three of the five hits are publications from 2012 and only my entry is a text about financial auditing. It would seem that people are really interested in low audit quality. Present and future students hence ought to keep this in mind when choosing subjects for their bachelor and master theses. (And I and my colleagues should also return to the subject.)
From this perspective the popularity of the database entry is however a little ironic because, as is apparent from the discussion above, I changed the title of the paper between the conference and the subsequent publication of the paper three years later. The paper still is about low audit quality but it is definitely not about “audit quality at the low end of the audit quality continuum” as the title of the conference paper reads. It was however submitted as such to Critical Perspectives on Accounting but I had to change the title to “An analysis of the demands on a sufficient audit” as one of the anonymous reviewers made me aware of the nonsense of talking about an audit quality continuum as if it was a single metric or a compound of metrics that could be measured along a single dimension. It is now clear to me (as it should have been already when I submitted the paper for publication) that audit quality is far more complex than that. Actually, I made this observation the main point of the introduction of the journal article. Later I also changed the second part of the title to “professional appearance is what counts”, by suggestion from the editor after the paper was accepted for publication. It was a good suggestion, which I accepted without alteration or hesitation.
The second part of the title is good because it so accurately describes the main point made in the paper. And this is also why I find the popularity of the title of the conference paper so ironic. Because, the main point of both versions of the paper is, as the later title so clearly emphasises, that although quality in a technical sense is important when deciding what is good and bad auditing, what really matter is the appearance of the auditor as professional. And this is ironic because I suspect that this is exactly what is going on here too. People find the database entry because they search for “low audit quality” and  because there are few if any alternatives in the database. But this does not mean that they have to click on the link. They could just leave DiVA and go to Google Scholar instead. The reason why they click on the link, I believe, has to do with the title having such a scientific ring to it, especially the part I later, thanks to the reviewers, came to view as the most flawed part of the paper: “the audit quality continuum”.
If this is true I guess I should be a bit embarrassed by the popularity of (the title of) the conference paper. Because, what makes people click on the link is the part of the paper I am least proud of. Fortunately they cannot read the paper. Furthermore the popularity of the database entry also gave me this chance to make “clever” analogies between the content of the paper and the popularity of the paper. On the balance, I have therefore decided to be happy for the popularity of the database entry, if nothing else for it being such a good indicator that Uppsala University need more audit research! Furthermore, the conference paper may not be the paper with the highest quality I have written, but (for those who haven’t read this blog post) it sure helps keep up the appearance of me as a competent researcher!
The Mirror Cracked
When company managers, analysts and other âusersâ look at the numbers in a financial report, many claim not to recognize the company the report is supposed to represent. For them the changes introduced by the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2005 are not merely technical, but epistemological. Accounting used to be a mirror of âeconomic realityâ. Admittedly it was an imprecise mirror, continuously debated and refined by accounting scholars and standard-setters, but a mirror nonetheless. The theoretical description of this worldview was the correspondence theory of truth. Given the constant fine-tuning of the mirror, change within this paradigm was normal, as better correspondence between financial reports and the reality they reported on was constantly sought. With the introduction of IFRS however, the changes burst its paradigmatic borders and ushered in a number of pivotal changes, such as more judgement, a shift from objective verifiability to intersubjectivity as the criterion for reliability, and a shift from historical cost valuation of assets, to market (or market aspiring) valuations of some assets. Arguably, accounting is no longer adapting to the mirror metaphor. The mirror has cracked.
[ … ]
Continue reading “The Mirror Cracked” (in pdf format) published in Mercury 2012, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Autumn), pp. 60-63.
The history of the modern audit profession â told by an Ngram
Ngram: audit, bankruptcy, accountability Source: Google Ngram Viewer
The article of the future?
In general I celebrate every effort to move beyond the pdf-format. And Elsevierâs âarticle of the futureâ looks like a neat solution. It is however not unproblematic. First, and most important, the number one feature I would like to see in the evolution of the research article is increased transportability and display-ability. I would like toâwithout effort, there are hacksâbe able to view an article wherever I want and on whatever device I want. This new article format doesnât exactly seem to improve on that. For instance, what if I would like to view the article on a tablet computer? I must assume that most of the reading in the future will be on iPads, Windows (8) tablets, and whatever comes thereafter. Elsevierâs new article format would require me, it seems, to hold the tablet in landscape mode, and, in lack of a native client, have access to the Internet. I would much more prefer if they went in the other direction and made it (as close as possible to) plain text.1 Plain text combined with Markdown or a similar markup language would also address my wish to be able to display the article as I wish.
- 1. And then we of course get into the whole open access issue.  âŠ
A new URL
In lack of “real content” here is another meta-post about this slowly changing web site.
I have changed the root URL from “www.carrington.se/wordpress” to “www.carrington.se/blog”. This is an example of the kind of SEO suicidal move one can afford when one doesn’t have a lot of readers. Still, there is a real chance that spammers will be the only “readers” around for a while. Nonetheless, this is move I have wanted to do for a long time in order to streamline the link structure with the parent site www.carrington.se. Until now the change has however not made much sense as the real mess with regards to link structure is the parent site that, for reasons I can’t remember anymore, I once upon a time choose to build with iWeb. Now the time has come to abandon iWeb and changing the url of this blog is a first preparatory step in that process.
Update 2011-06-30: iWeb is now finally history for me. As a bonus result the style of the website is now more coherent and the link structure more logical.
Rearranging the furniture
I have decided, as of today (March 2011), to move my personal stuff over to thomascarrington.net – a tumblr blog. When I say move I donât mean that I will remove the posts categorized as personal from this blog and repost them on the tumblr blog. But I will shift my attention to thomascarrington.net for everything not research, teaching or otherwise âworkâ related. I have noticed that I find it liberating to have different forums for different types of content. Different (imagined?) audiences I guess.
I predict that this move will make me share more, post more, and – who knows – maybe even write more. So if you are interested in following my more random, non-academia related stuff (well, there will probably be some of that too over there) – please follow me over to thomascarrington.net.
Trying to quit Facebook
It is scary as it is that Facebook applications know EVERYTHING about me. Now when websites can access Facebook through developer friendly APIs – in effect making them Facebook applications – I really should at least deactivate my account.
If I had any character whatsoever I would do it. But I guess that – and half a billion users – is exactly what is the problem.
Six reasons to hate Facebook’s new anti-privacy system, “Connections” ⢠http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/04/six-reasons-to-hate.html
Is the New Facebook a Deal With the Devil? ⢠http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_centralization.php
Bizarro identity ⢠http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/04/22/bizarro-identity/
Privacy issues? Google engineers leaving Facebook in droves ⢠http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/23/privacy-issues-google-engineers-leaving-facebook-in-droves/
Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook ⢠http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/diaspora_project_building_the_anti-facebook.php
Facebook Open Graph: The Definitive Guide For Publishers, Users and Competitors ⢠http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_open_graph_the_definitive_guide_for_publishers_users_and_competitors.php
To Facebook the answer must be no ⢠http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/04/21/toFacebookTheAnswerMustBeN.html
Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook ⢠http://www.rocket.ly/home/2010/4/26/top-ten-reasons-you-should-quit-facebook.html
What Private Facebook Information Your Friends Can Publish ⢠http://smarterware.org/5818/what-private-facebook-information-your-friends-can-publish
How to Delete Facebook Applications (and Why You Should) ⢠http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_delete_facebook_applications_and_why_you_should.php
What Facebook Quizzes Know About You ⢠http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_facebook_quizzes_know_about_you.php
Criticism of Facebook ⢠http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook
Edit text with three sets of square brackets
I really like this simple syntax for editing text suggested by Aza Raskin. With the use of square brackets you can suggest additions, deletions and add comments within plain text without the need for a specific comments function in your word processor. How the system works can be illustrated by the following example:
“They called to say that their coming over in an quarter-hour.”
An editor might revise the sentence to:
“They called to say that the[ir][y’re] coming over in a[n] quarter-hour. [][][Be careful with “their” and “they’re”.]”
The edits are deciphered like so:
- the[ir][y’re]: âtheirâ was used when âtheyâreâ was meant. To fix this problem the editor suggestions deleting âirâ and replacing it with âyâreâ.
- a[n]: âAnâ should only used before a word that begins with a vowel-like sound. The editor suggests removing the ânâ of âanâ.
- [][][Be careful…]: The editor is reprimanding the author for forgetting the rules of English. Notice the two sets of empty brackets that prefix the comment. They are needed to make sure that comment cannot be confused for an addition or deletion.
Hence, the first set of brackets denotes a deletion, a set of brackets directly following the first set denotes an addition and a third set denotes a comment.
[deletion][addition][comment]
If you don’t want to make a comment the third set of brackets is simply excluded. The same logic follows if all you want to do is to mark a deletion, then both the second and the third set of bracket are excluded. If you want to make a comment to a deletion the second set of brackets is left empty. And so on. If this was not clear from the example above the following list may be helpful.
Suggest a deletion: [xxx]
Suggest an addition : [][yyy]
Suggest a substitution: [xxx][yyy]
Suggest a deletion and add a comment: [xxx][][zzz]
Suggest an addition and add a comment: [][yyy][zzz]
Suggest a substitution and add a comment: [xxx][yyy][zzz]
where “xxx” is the text to be deleted, “yyy” the text to be added and “zzz” a comment.
Read Aza Raskin’s original post: Collaboration Made Simple with Bracket Notation.