Is Silence Golden? Audit Team Leader Reactions to Subordinates Who Speak Up “In the Moment” and at Performance Appraisal

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines audit team leader reactions to auditors who speak up about potentially important audit issues. Study 1 is a survey of interacting audit teams and provides evidence of higher performance evaluations for auditors who speak up. Studies 2, 3, and 4 are experiments examining team leader reactions to speaking up, both at the time speaking up occurs (Study 2) and later, during performance evaluation (Studies 2, 3, and 4). Results provide evidence that team leaders react with irritation at the time speaking up occurs, particularly if a team member raises an audit effectiveness issue that could increase audit effort. However, team leaders reward speaking up in performance evaluations, particularly when team members speak up about issues that align with the effectiveness or efficiency focus of the team. While supervisors' performance evaluations exhibit outcome effects, supervisors also reward speaking up, regardless of outcome. Data Availability: Contact the authors.