This paper explores whether and in what way “dual learning” can develop understanding of the relationship between structure/judgement and explores audit student’s perceptions of the audit profession. Work Integrated Learning (WIL) module, serving as a tool of enabling dual learning, represents the context for this exploration. The study is based on a focus group and individual interviews conducted with students performing their WIL. Our data and its analysis indicates that when in a WIL context, students develop awareness of the use of standards and checklists on the one hand and the importance of discretional judgement on the other. Based on these results, we theorise as to how dual learning manifests itself in students’ experiences and understanding of the relationship between structure and judgement.

The purpose of this study is to explore how external auditors experience their decision to rely on internal auditors’ work. This study employs both qualitative and quantitative methods consisting of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires administered to external auditors in Sweden. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with external auditors who are working in Big 4 audit firms in Sweden and have engagements with internal audit functions. A questionnaire was administered to authorized/approved auditors, members of the Swedish Association of Certified Public Accountants (FAR). Findings indicate that external auditors use the work of internal auditors as they gain efficiency in performing their work. Nevertheless, external auditors may compromise their independence and professionalism through closer involvement with internal auditors, which may lead to uncritical evaluation and use of the reports prepared by internal auditors. At the same time, while relying on the internal auditors’ reports, external auditors appear to be conscious of the consequences for the audit quality they deliver. The study highlights the dilemma faced by external auditors in their cooperative work with internal auditors and the balance/imbalance in their opinions concerning efficiency gains, independence, professionalism and audit quality.

Abstract/Research Summary: This study explains the conditions underwhich new venture boards are less or more culturallydiverse in terms of their directors' country of birth. Longitudi-nal data on 5,515 Swedish ventures suggest that most direc-tors are recruited from founders' proximate social settings neighborhoods in which they reside and past workplaces and that diversity levels in these social settings strongly predict the national culture diversity in venture boards. Given the rapid internationalization of workplaces and region saround the world, this paper provides important clues regarding how culturally diverse upper echelons are being incorporated into the organizational design of new ventures.

Managerial Summary: Most New Venture Boards exhibitlimited diversity in terms of their directors' country of birth, as they are drawn from the venture founders' network. Yet,some new venture boards are indeed born diverse. Our study reveals that founders with prior exposure to culturally diverse workplaces and residential neighborhoods are much more likely to design a culturally diverse board at founding. Given the rapid internationalization of workplaces andregions in most countries around the world, our paper provides important clues regarding how national culture diversity in top management emerges and is being incorporatedinto the organizational design of new ventures.

This paper is aimed at explaining how time budget pressure influences audit quality in the Swedish context. A hypothesis is deduced and tested through a survey sent to Swedish auditors. The Swedish context provides a special setting since audit firms and auditors have been facing new pressures due, for example, to the removal of statutory audits for a majority of the companies in Sweden. The findings show that time budget pressure lowers the quality of audits performed by Swedish auditors, but it is not the only explanation. Audit quality is also related to other factors such as gender, position, experience, number of clients, local office size and audit firm. Thus, the model is useful for explaining the factors influencing audit quality and could be used and expanded in future studies. The study also has practical implications showing that when trading-off between audit efforts and available resources and setting time budgets for each audit assignment, audit firms should also consider the personal characteristics of the auditors.

The attractiveness of audit firms as employers appears to have decreased in recent years and the audit profession is currently experiencing high employee turnover. A shortage of personnel increases the risk of long-term stress and illness. This paper therefore proposes audit firm employees' well-being as an important research topic and explores the antecedents of well-being of Swedish audit firm employees in comparison with those of other business professionals. Based on a nationwide survey of members of the Swedish association of business professionals, with a focus on psychological well-being (measured through General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12)), the study shows that the psychological well-being of the professionals in this study generally aligns with the results from similar studies in a Swedish context. However, the findings indicate that audit industry respondents have the lowest psychological well-being and that employer change, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction were the strongest antecedents of their psychological well-being.

Purpose

This paper seeks to explain how auditors’ professional and organizational identities are associated with commercialization in audit firms. Unlike previous studies exploring the consequences of commercialization in the firms, our study directs its attention toward the potential driver of commercialization, which we argue to be the identities of the auditors.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on 374 responses to a survey distributed to 3588 members of FAR, the professional association of accountants, auditors and advisors in Sweden. The study used established measures of organizational and professional identity and introduced market, customer and firm process orientation as aspects of commercialization. The study explored the data through descriptive statistics, principle component analysis and correlation analysis and tested the hypotheses with multiple linear regression analysis.

Findings

The findings indicated that the organizational identity of auditors has a positive association with three aspects of commercialization: market orientation, customer orientation and firm process orientation. Contrary to the arguments based on prior literature, our study has found that the professional identity of auditors is also a positively associated with commercialization. This indicates a change of the role of professional identity vis-à-vis commercialization of audit firms. The positive association between professional identity and commercial orientation could indicate the development of “organizational professionalism.” The study also found differences between the association between professional identity and commercialization in Big 4 and non-Big 4 firms. While in Big 4 firms, professional identity is positively associated only with the firm’s process orientation, in non-Big 4 firms, professional identity has a positive association with all three aspects of commercialization.

Originality/value

The paper provides insight into how auditors’ identities have influenced commercialization of audit firms and into the normalizing of commercialization within auditing. The study also developed a new instrument for measuring commercialization, one based on market, customer and firm process orientation concepts. This paper suggests that this instrument is an alternative to the observation through proxies.

In this paper I will discuss some issues concerning cooperation between academia and society in the context of the establishment of a cooperative research platform at Kristianstad University in Sweden. The platform aims at developing scientific knowledge and practical utility through cooperation between the university‟s resources, mainly its faculty, and practise in society, be it individuals or organizations, be it private, public or voluntary organisations.

With the purpose of explaining professional audit costs in Swedish municipalities, we hypothesised that audit costs are partly driven by various signalling and monitoring incentives in order to manage stakeholder relationships. Our model of the determinants of audit costs was tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organisations in a Scandinavian institutional context. The test supported to some extent the traditional propositions of organisational complexity, risk and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the political environment. Our results indicate that audit costs are used to signal accountability, thereby suggesting that audit as a signal could be managed without managing professional auditors.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a concept of auditor as consigliere in family firms, that captures additional functions to monitoring, those of advice, mediating, and conveying. Design/methodology/approach - The concept is tested through a survey conducted on 309 Swedish auditors. Findings - The data indicate that the consigliere role is generally not emphasized, indicating that auditors primarily perform the monitoring role of the audit. However, the authors do find indications of the auditor performing the consigliere role, through performing the advisory and mediating functions and, to a smaller degree, the conveying function. Research limitations/implications - The survey is limited in response rate and in separating governance situations from consigliere functions. Practical implications - With reservation for professional independence, the auditor as consigliere could be part of the governance of the family firm, but should be trained for this activity. Social implications - Regulators should pay attention to the consigliere role when, for example, stipulating compulsory rotation of auditors. Originality/value - The paper shows that the auditor is more than a monitor in family firms. The consigliere role, even if not at all dominating, has to be considered, at least in family firms.

Kravet på byrårotation kommer att leda till ökat inslag av strategisk prissättning av revision. Det skriver Sven-Olof Yrjö Collin och hans studenter Frida Edlund och Matilda Jönsson som undersökt frågan i ett examensarbete för civilekonomexamen.

Shareholders are not identical, but differ in their objectives and actions. One difference is the level of delegation of the principal functions to the board, which we suggest can be observed through the level of directors’ compensation. We analyze the difference in board compensation through the concept of governance strategy and suggest two distinct categories of shareholder strategies: the company governance strategy and the financial governance strategy. These strategies create different distributions of governance costs, which we separate into principal costs and agency costs. We claim that the financial governance strategy adopts a higher level of delegation, which implies that the principal costs are assumed by the corporation and that agency costs are higher. This in turn can explain the higher compensation for the directors of the board compared to compensation under the company governance strategy. We test our hypothesis using a three-year panel of Swedish listed corporations and find that shareholders pursuing a financial governance strategy are associated with higher levels of board compensation. These findings suggest the existence of differences in governance strategies, reflected in governance costs through board compensation, among different types of shareholders in a corporation.

Det är inte en bra väg att försämra revisorernas kunskaper i ekonomi. Kvaliteten i revisionen får inte bli lidande, skriver Sven-Olof Yrjö Collin och Timurs Umans i en replik.

We present a model of supervising bachelor and master theses that we have developed at Kristianstad University in Sweden. It emphasizes 1.) engagement, in that the research engaged supervisor becomes engaged in both the subject of the thesis and the students writing it; 2.) the Humboldt principle, in that teachers and students collaborate for mutual benefit; 3.) the Socratic method, in that the supervisor drives students´ learning through posing questions. The model implies intense and frequent supervision, seminars with students as opponents and respondents, and finally, popular presentation, where the results are presented for an educated public. The examination of the theses have the double function of securing high standard examination and to develop the staff in their supervisory and examinatory skills. The direction of the supervisory team is mainly made through common norms, such as a thesis have to be driven by theory, methodological pragmatism implying that the problem, not the authors preferences, determine which analytical method to use and empirical orientation that theories needs to be tested or evaluated. The model described has shown good results, both in national evaluations and through number of scientific publications.

The question  addressed  is how small  firms  compensate for  deficiencies in  their accountinginformation systems and what other means they apply to handle uncertainty in their environments. Empirical data was gathered from six small firms representing two different branches of the service industry: craft and culture. A qualitative method was employed and data comes from in depth interviews with the managers and has been structured according to the framework of Simons (1995). Data indicates that most of the studied firms lack significant portions of a formal managing accounting information system. Instead, they rely upon external information, through strategic networks of competitors, customers, employees and branch organizations, to make pricing and development decisions. A practical as well as a theoretical implication  is that management control frameworks need  to  explicitly  take  intoaccount trust and trustworthiness both in relation to environment and to employees.

This paper examines how an industrial legacy leads to the formation of a distinct local culture and how the culture's survival provides a context for the subsequent entrepreneurial activities in new local industries. The discussion about culture as a key driver of entrepreneurship and economic growth is well established in the academic debate. However, we know little about how culture is formed. Through a qualitative case study of two polar Swedish cities, the study highlights four key factors which are instrumental in the formation of local culture: initial conditions, characteristics of key players, network activities and composition of newcomers. We show how the local entrepreneurs responded to the underlying assumptions of the two different cultures.

Gastronomy program at Kristianstad University has since many years been working with innovative processes and have created a number of courses aimed at developing innovative generic skills among their students. One of such courses is “Creative concept and product development in the foodstuff”.  The course presents the students an opportunity to develop new and exciting food stuff products in team of learners. The course has now run for 4 years and students have expressed satisfaction with their innovative skill development and the usefulness of skills acquired in their future career.  While the course have received many positive evaluations, a systematic evaluation of its structure and implementation has not yet been performed. This project aimed at evaluating how different aspects of team work (e.g. diversity and experiences) relate to students' development of innovative skills within the course. The study’s theoretical base lays in the field of collaborative learning (e.g. Bruffee, 1993), team learning (Slavin, 1978) and well as acquisition of generic skills in the collaborative and team learning processes. The project utilized an Input-Process-Output (Ilgen, et al. 2005) model where exploration diversity, team process and self-perceived outcomes and relationship between those have been investigated by the means of qualitative and quantitative methods. Relying on the surveys and reflective diaries of the course participants the study showed how various diversity aspects of the teams related to their processes and self-assessed outcomes, as well as show how students reason about collaboration in diverse groups. Based on the findings the study puts forward suggestion of how to manage the team work in increasingly diverse classes in the institutions of higher education and which method both students and instructors could employ to rip the benefits of this diversity.  

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore why audit assistants leave the audit profession. By including both the perceptions held by audit assistants that left the audit profession and the perceptions of audit assistants still working in the audit profession, this study aims to explore how determinants of job satisfaction are associated with decisions to leave the audit profession.

Design/methodology/approach – To explore the association between determinants of job satisfaction and decisions to leave, a survey was developed based on a literature review of determinants of job satisfaction. The survey was sent to both current and former Swedish audit assistants. The subsequent analysis was based on 231 complete surveys, of which 78 were from former audit assistants.

Findings – The main finding of this study is that there is a negative association between the choice to leave the profession and audit assistants’ perceptions of the profession and between the choice to leave and work-life balance. Another finding was that met expectations and Big 4 were found to be positively associated with career change.

Originality/value – By approaching both current and former audit assistants, this study contributes to the literature on audit employee turnover by exploring determinants of actual career change, rather than turnover y identifying and testing a variable not previously used as a determinant of jobsatisfaction, namely, perceptions of the audit profession.

Stakeholder co-creation is of key strategic importance and a topical issue within both place marketing and public governance. However, co-creation is a wide concept and there is a need to further the understanding of the roles of stakeholders and the specific activities in co-creation. Inspired by the place marketing field, the context of this study is the place. Thus, a contribution is made to public governance by a change in focus. Furthermore, a model grounded in empirical work is created which helps us to understand different activities that take place in the co-creation of a place to live. Six important activities in place co-creation are identified: handling, enabling, operating, social networking, supporting and representing.

The increased global connectivity and mobility of both humans and capital has created competition between municipalities in attracting the resources needed to achieve their developmental goals. A call for papers focusing on reputation and brand management in Scandinavian municipalities has been announced. Today, it is absolutely necessary to be an attractive place and municipality, and brand management can be a tool in both achieving and communicating this. For branding to be effective, it is critical to have a good understanding of the branding context, and this conceptual paper explores the branding context for municipalities by analysing it—firstly, based on a product-oriented paradigm and, secondly, on service-based logics. It is argued that much of current place management and place branding research rests on belief in the product-oriented paradigm and thus focuses largely on the provider. In contrast, using service-based logics as a starting point places value creation at the center and shifts the focus to the resident. This has several theoretical and methodological consequences as well as practical implications for Scandinavian municipalities, and these will be discussed in the paper.

This systematic review covers the extant literature on corporate governance in entrepreneurial firms. Using a sample of 137 research papers published from pre-1990 through June 2018 in 60 journals, we categorize outlets, research methods (quantitative, qualitative, review, and non-empirical), theoretical perspectives, and research questions, highlighting key patterns. We then summarize the concepts under study in the sample literature, and the geographical sources and model specification ofquantitative empirical studies. The conclusion highlights the quite fragmented nature of the field and the substantial knowledge gaps, and then proposes an actionable agenda for future research in terms of theories, research questions, research settings, and research designs. In particular, we describe the need to explore how corporate governance mechanisms interact with one another and affect firm outcomes, by applying novel theoretical perspectives and methods that could provide a better understanding of entrepreneurial firms’ functioning.

Research Question/Issue

How does organizational context influence the impact of board control over managerial decisions on shareholder wealth?

Research Findings/Insights

We introduce a new theoretical concept—organizational discretion—to characterize the upper limit of managers’ latitude of actions presented by their organizational context, and propose that it moderates the impact of board control on shareholder wealth. Specifically, we first argue that strategic control by boards over managerial decisions reduces managers’ latitude of actions and leads to trade‐offs between the containment of managerial opportunism and the pursuit of strategic opportunities, which consequently influence the relationship between strategic control and shareholder wealth. We then suggest that the trade‐offs incurred by strategic control over managerial decisions are more prominent in firms with high organizational discretion. Because of the trade‐offs, we propose that boards are likely to decide whether to rely more on strategic control or financial control in internal corporate governance based on their firms’ level of organizational discretion.

Theoretical/Academic Implications

By introducing the concept of organizational discretion and highlighting the trade‐offs caused by boards’ strategic control over managerial decisions, we advance a contingency perspective to enhance the understanding about the impact of board control on shareholder wealth. It also bridges the strategic management and corporate governance research on managerial discretion that has largely evolved separately in the literature.

Practitioner/Policy Implications

Boards should attend to the trade‐offs between the containment of managerial opportunism and the pursuit of strategic opportunities when exercising strategic control over managerial decisions. Moreover, considering the trade‐offs involved, boards should carefully design and implement internal corporate governance mechanisms based on their firms’ level of organizational discretion.

In today’s society, products and services are offered in a number of different organizational forms: leisure activities are offered by not-for-profit associations or privately held firms, waste disposal services by local government corporations or administrations, manufactured products and services by listed corporations or state-owned corporations. Independent of organizational form and type of products and services offered, the long-term survival and success of the organization should benefit from a governance system that supports the exploration of novel opportunities that are in line with the purpose of the organization. As such, an intertwinement between a governance system of an organization and the exploration of novel opportunities for the advancement of the organization is suggested. Aspects of governance can be found in the literature of corporate governance (e.g., Shleifer and Vishny, 1997) and tend to have a disciplining emphasis. Aspects of the exploration of novel opportunities can be found in the literature of entrepreneurship (Covin and Lumpkin, 2011; Zahra et al., 2000) and tend to have an enabling emphasis. The starting point for an intertwinement between governance and entrepreneurship is that organizations are present to serve the interests of the holders of property rights (sometimes diffusedly termed owners, members or, in agency theory, principals) and as such, entrepreneurship should be in accordance with and aligned to these interests. Corporate governance mechanisms serve as a way to align the interests of property rights holders, for example, as in agency theory, to align the interests of the principals and the agents (Schleifer and Vischny, 1997). Therefore, corporate governance mechanisms appear to be a relevant starting point for considering the influence on entrepreneurship at the organizational level, hereafter termed corporate entrepreneurship. Such an intertwinement is moreover in line with researchers’ identification of interesting and insufficiently explored topics (e.g., Caruana et al., 2002; Corbett et al., 2013; Lacetera, 2001; Phan et al., 2009).

This paper critically scrutinizes the key success factors and tools described in the partnering literature by exploring how they are implemented in a public–private partnering collaboration. In addition to this the paper investigates to what extent these tools facilitate the relationship between the parties in a partnering process. The empirical data consist of two longitudinal case studies. Both cases are large and complex urban development projects in the Swedish water and sewage industry. The results from the cases were ambiguous and positive; as well, some negative outcomes were present. Further, the processes were in both cases far from easy and it required a lot of effort from the parties in the collaboration to make the collaboration work and establish a culture based on trust, especially higher up in the organization. As could be expected, the reality is thus far more complex and cumbersome than previous studies indicate.

BACKGROUND: Business professionals are an important occupational group that carries responsibility for the economic welfare of organizations and of society at large. These professionals have recently been reported to be experiencing increased mental strain, which may have a significant effect on their role they play in organizations and in society. Understanding the causes of this strain is thus an important endeavour.   

OBJECTIVE: This study explores the antecedents of the mental health of business professionals.  

METHODS: Multiple linear regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between business professionals’ mental health and its demographic, work-related, and other triggers. T-tests and descriptive statistics were used to explore the gender of the respondents in relation to these triggers and mental health.  

RESULTS: Compared with their male counterparts, female business professionals report poorer mental health; however, no gender differences were found in job satisfaction or life satisfaction. According to this study, age, overtime pay, higher salary and position as a manager have a positive relation with mental health, whereas working overtime has a negative relation with mental health. Job satisfaction and life satisfaction are important determinants of the mental health of business professionals.

CONCLUSIONS: Business professionals are important to the economic welfare of their organization and of society as a whole. Our study suggests that demographic characteristics, work-related aspects and subjective dimensions of well-being have a profound effect on the mental health of business professionals.