External auditors’ reliance on internal audit: the impact of sourcing arrangements and consulting activities

This study examines the impact of internal audit outsourcing and involvement in consulting on external auditors’ reliance on the work of internal audit. We test whether these factors influence reliance on internal audit work already undertaken and the use of internal auditors as assistants, distinguishing between control evaluation and substantive testing. Involvement in consulting impacts reliance on work undertaken and the use of internal auditors as assistants for control evaluation. External auditors make greater use of internal auditors as assistants for substantive testing when internal audit is provided in‐house. Overall, external auditors use internal audit more for control evaluation tasks.     

Introduction to the Special Issue: Things We Do and Don’t Understand About the Household and the Environment

Environmental economics has been slow to incorporate the full and complex nature of the household into its analytical structures and to reflect empirical evidence on household decision-making. This paper provides an overview of some of the main unanswered questions.      

Personalities of accounting students and public accountants: Implications for accounting educators and the profession

This study compares personalities of senior accounting students with public accountants using a rigorous personality instrument, the 16PF. Comparisons are made between accountants and students, between accountants and students by gender, between male and female students, and between students and junior accountants. For all comparisons made, the findings indicate significant differences exist, both overall and for individual personality factors. Implications of these findings for accounting educators concerning curriculum emphasis, content, and counseling of students are discussed, together with possible implications for the profession.     

Leading for collaborative public service innovation

ABSTRACT

This article examines the critical leadership actions that support collaborative public service innovations, drawing on evidence from UK local government led partnerships. It concludes that success is more likely if leaders help the partnership to: build mutual trust; agree clear, well thought through, politically supported ambitions; invest time, resources and energy; galvanize managers and staff; make a long term commitment to achieving the objectives, learning, adapting and growing innovations together.     

Safety motivation and human resource management in North America

Approximately 4.2 million Americans suffered nonfatal work-related injuries and 6,000 workers died of fatal work-related injuries in the US in 2005 (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2007 Bureau of Labor Statistics (2007), http://www.bls.gov/iif/home.htm (http://www.bls.gov/iif/home.htmo)  [Google Scholar]). Given these numbers, employee safety continues to be a concern in organizations despite engineering advances that have reduced exposures over the past few decades. Many factors contribute to workplace safety. These include characteristics of the physical environment and human behaviour within that environment. Human behaviour on some level plays a role in the vast majority of workplace accidents and injuries. This can include risky behaviour and signal detection failures, as well as a lack of proactive and collective safety behaviours that focus on changing the work environment to increase safety. Although several predictors of safety-related behaviour have been identified, there are some unresolved issues with respect to safety performance in organizations. This article focuses on the behaviours that compose safety performance, the factors that contribute to human safety performance, particularly those related to motivation, and some potential new areas of research in safety motivation in organizations.     

Radical innovation: triggering initiation of opportunity recognition and evaluation

The gap between a firm's reservoir of technical knowledge and the formation of a project to explore the commercial potential of a breakthrough technical insight or discovery is the first major discontinuity in the radical innovation lifecycle. The first step toward bridging that gap occurs when the researcher with the technical insight recognizes that it might have commercial potential and decides to alert a research manager. In our longitudinal study of eight radical innovation projects in six large, multi‐national, R&D‐intensive firms, the initiation of a radical innovation project was neither frequent nor routine. In fact the participants in the study indicated that the initiation of a project – in their terminology, the 'fuzzy front end of innovation'– was the most challenging and uncertain part of the lifecycle. In this paper we explore the case data to illuminate the nature of the initiation gap. In addition we present an assessment framework that can help researchers decide whether or not to bring their technical idea to the attention of management. If the decision is positive, the assessment tool can help them prepare for the discussion with management and identify the strengths and weaknesses of the case to submitted for evaluation.