Scott Emett and Dr. David Wood, Accountancy
After a few months of developing my original ORCA proposal topic entitled “The Effect of Internal Control and Framing on Employee Process Improvement Suggestions”, I learned an invaluable lesson about academic research: many promising research ideas do not turn out to be as promising from a research perspective as originally thought. After running into several problems with the experimental operationalization of this research idea as well as problems with the theoretical contributions that the project would make, my mentor and I decided to abandon this research idea and pursue other research ideas that seemed more promising. Over the past year, however, I have been able to use my ORCA grant to work with my mentor on several research projects that have been successful and continue to progress. I summarize these projects below.
Christ, M. H., S. A. Emett, S. L. Summers, and D. A. Wood. 2010. The Effects of Preventive and Detective Controls on Employee Performance and Motivation. (Under third-round revision at Contemporary Accounting Research).
In this article, we examined how two attributes of preventive and detective controls affect employee performance and employee motivation. Specifically, we examined how the extent to which controls (1) restrict employees’ autonomy, and (2) provide more or less timely feedback impacts employees’ performance and motivation. We conducted an experiment to examine how and why these two types of formal controls impact employees’ performance in an incomplete contract setting in which one dimension of the employees’ task is compensated and one dimension is controlled. The results showed that the restricted autonomy of preventive controls had no effect on employees’ performance on the control objective but significantly reduced employee motivation. In contrast, increased timeliness of control feedback significantly improved employees’ performance on the control objective but had no effect on employee motivation. Neither characteristic had a significant effect on employees’ performance on the compensated dimension of the task, suggesting that monetary incentives continue to provide an effective motivation. Our results suggest the importance of designing and implementing controls that provide timely feedback but do not restrict autonomy.
At the beginning of the year, I was privileged to present this paper at the American Accounting Association’s AIS Midyear Research Conference to professors across the country. We are currently revising the paper before submitting it for third-round review at Contemporary Accounting Research.
Burton, F. G., S. A. Emett, C. A. Simon, and D. A. Wood. 2010. Corporate Managers’ Reliance on Internal Auditor Recommendations
To better understand the internal audit function of companies, we examined how three attributes of internal auditor recommendations influence corporate managers’ reliance on and perceptions of internal audit recommendations. More specifically, we examined whether corporate managers are influenced by (1) whether the internal auditor’s recommendation was consistent vs. inconsistent with management’s initial preferences, (2) whether the internal auditor giving the recommendation was outsourced vs. in-house, and (3) whether the recommendation given was quantitative vs. qualitative in nature. To do this, we adapted a case used by Kadous et al. (2005) to operationalize our research question, and we sent our adapted case to experienced managers across the nation.
Based on responses from hundreds of experienced managers, we found that managers are more likely to change their initial positions when internal auditors give preference-inconsistent recommendations rather than preference-consistent recommendations. Furthermore, we found that managers perceive that in-house internal auditors are more competent than outsourced internal auditors when the internal auditors give quantified recommendations. Finally, we found that managers are more likely to rely on in-house internal auditors than outsourced internal auditors when the internal auditors give quantified recommendations.
We are currently working on revising this paper before submitting it to an accounting journal for review.
Emett, S. A., W. B. Tayler, and D. A. Wood. 2010. Defining Deviancy Down: The Development of Social Norms under Imperfect Controls.
In this paper we investigate the interaction of two types of organizational norms: personal norms and descriptive norms. Personal norms are beliefs about what behavior is appropriate in a given setting, and descriptive norms represent the predominant behavior of others. In the study, we seek to understand whether socially-interested individuals will be swayed by self-interested descriptive norms more than self-interested individuals will be swayed by socially-interested descriptive norms. We also seek to understand how changes in descriptive norms differentially affect individuals for whom different personal norms are activated. To test our predictions, we will use a public goods game, similar to that used by Tayler and Bloomfieild (2010), in which we manipulate personal norms, descriptive norms, and a change in the descriptive norm after time.
Although this paper is still in its early stages, I was privileged to present our research proposal at BYU’s Accounting Symposium in November.
Emett, S., and D. A. Wood. 2010. Common Question-Evasion Tactics. Journal of Accountancy. July: 36-39.
This article, published in the Journal of Accountancy in July 2010, is an article that I was privileged to co-author with my mentor. In the article, we addressed the tactics individuals commonly use to evade questions. We identified the reasons why individuals evade questions, the methods that are often used to evade questions, and the strategies that interviewers can use to get the answers they need.
In addition to writing the article with Dr. Wood and publishing the article at the Journal of Accountancy, I was invited to present this article at the Utah Government Auditors Association annual training to hundreds of government auditors from across the state. I accepted the invitation and presented the article at the training in the summer of 2010.