Big 5 Auditors' Professional and Organizational Identification: Consistency or Conflict?

Abstract

In response to a variety of challenges, accounting firms are reorganizing and reengineering their core audit services to capitalize on technology advances and to deliver more value-added services to their clients. Critics, however, have voiced concern that the changes underway undermine auditors' professionalism. Accordingly, this study examines auditors' sense of professional identity. Specifically, we provide (1) a comprehensive model of the relation between auditors' professional and organizational identities, including their potential conflict; and (2) the antecedents and consequences of auditors' professional and organizational identification, including how organizational-professional conflict relates to turnover. We find relatively high levels of professional identification and organizational identification, and a relatively low level of organizational-professional conflict among our study's 252 Big 5 auditors. Professional identification is positively related to organizational identification, but it is organizational identification and its antecedents that play the central role in the empirical model. Organizational identification decreases both organizational-professional conflict and turnover. The results have implications for both practitioners and researchers.