Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting

What Do You Recommend? The Effects of Communication and Dark Personality on Misreporting in Autonomous Teams

• In Event: Fraud/Misreporting

Abstract

In autonomous teams, the responsibility for important tasks and decisions, like reporting decisions, is shared among team members, creating uncertainty about how much influence each team member has on the team’s decision. We examine autonomous teams to analyze the effects of communication and team member personality on team cost reporting decisions. Our results show that team misreporting becomes more pronounced the darker the team members’ personality and that communication among team members fulfills a crucial role. Specifically, communication among team members fails to discipline dishonest team members with a darker personality. At the same time, it can infect honest team members with a less dark personality, both leading to more team misreporting. Our results grant detailed insight into the black box that is autonomous teams and showcases how their joint decision-making processes depend on communication and team composition.

Authors

• Anna Ressi, WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management

• Daniel Schaupp, WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management

• Victor van Pelt, WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management