How Offshoring Can Impact Novice Auditors’ Acquisition of Knowledge

• In Event: Group Audits and Off-Shoring

Abstract

Offshoring has become common practice among audit firms and has introduced dynamic changes to the experiences of novice auditors. Specifically, novice auditors now are more likely to experience different types of tasks such as reviewing someone else’s work. In this paper we examine how novice auditors learning and performance on different tasks in an offshoring setting. We utilize a 2x2x2 mixed design to manipulate the task structure as structured or ill-structured, the order in which tasks are performed, and the presence/absence of feedback. Our results show that when novice auditors perform a structured task first, they only marginally outperform novice auditors who first performed an ill-structured task. However, auditors who first performed a structured task followed by an ill-structured task show significant improvement in performance over auditors who first performed an ill-structured task followed by structured task. We also examine the effect of outcome feedback on performance and find that feedback helps novice auditors who perform a structured task more than those who perform an ill-structured task. This paper contributes to both research and practice by starting a dialog about the types of experiences novice auditors encounter in the current audit environment and the impact of such experiences on their fundamental knowledge acquisition.

Authors

• Velina Krastimirova Popova, Virginia Tech University

• Nicole S Wright, Northeastern University