The Ties that Bind: Knowledge-Sharing Networks and Auditor Performance

• In Event: Audit Firm Knowledge Sharing

Abstract

The dissemination of knowledge in audit firms is a critical process that has gone relatively unexamined by researchers. By surveying a Big 4 audit firm and applying social network techniques, we document the factors that determine the knowledge seeking activity of auditors. We find that auditors tend to seek knowledge from those auditors whom they consider their friends, those they work with on the same audit engagements, those who are of similar rank, and auditors with longer tenures. We also examine the association between the types and patterns of knowledge seeking ties and individual auditor performance. We find that auditor performance is associated with the number of social ties, the strength of a tie, ties with audit team members, and the extent of connectedness in the knowledge-seeking network. Taken together, we demonstrate that certain factors are associated with knowledge-sharing (knowledge seeking network) and that the components of this network are strongly related to auditor performance. The social ties between auditors lead to improved knowledge acquisition and auditor outcomes.

Authors

• Monika Causholli, University of Kentucky

• Nicole Thorne Jenkins, University of Kentucky

• Theresa Floyd, University of Montana

• Scott Soltis, University of Kentucky