個案總覽

In contrast to the well-known stereotype of the boring, unsociable accountant, today's public accounting professionals argue that they are boundary spanners. Working at the intersection of the firm/client interface, these professionals contend that sociability is a requisite skill for routinely navigating the many interactions they have with multiple personnel at client organizations. This research aims to address this disconnect and to confront whether the public perception is warranted. Using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue), we assess the sociability of 176 public accounting professionals and discover that, contrary to the stereotype, male public accountants are more sociable than males in the general population. Our analysis also demonstrates that female public accountants are no more or less sociable than females in the general population. Additional analysis shows that while male public accountants are more sociable than female public accountants, this effect is attributable to differences at lower levels of the profession and that male-female differences disappear when comparing male managers and partners to female managers and partners. Given the importance of sociability in public accounting, this research offers recruiting strategies that will help to dispel the myth of the unsociable accountant and provides training tips for enhancing sociability within the ranks.

Following the scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, and Qwest Communications, the accounting profession has spent the past several years trying to get back on track. While Sarbanes-Oxley may improve the decision-making of audit professionals, and help prevent future large-scale catastrophes that hurt stockholders and bring down firms, there is another problem in public accounting that few consider and nobody has proposed to solve: deviant workplace behavior. Previous research describes deviant workplace behavior as the voluntary behavior of organizational members that violates significant organizational norms and, in so doing, threatens the well being of the organization and/or its members. Building from recent work in various business literatures, this is the first research since the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley to examine workplace deviance at Big 4 accounting firms. Taking a cross-disciplinary, collaborative approach, the authors endeavor to explain why workplace deviance has infiltrated accounting firms and how it is undermining their effectiveness and derailing their long-term prospects for success. After describing its genesis and effects, the authors prescribe several managerial strategies for preventing deviance and minimizing its effects on a firm.