How a Systems Perspective Improves Knowledge Acquisition and Performance in Analytical Procedures
实验发现，审计师采用系统视角分析客户环境，能形成更连贯的心理模型，从而更准确识别与行业证据不符的管理层陈述，并更高效地吸收新证据以调整预期。
ABSTRACT: Auditors are required to understand dynamic business environments as part of the performance of analytical procedures. Prior evidence, though, suggests that auditors have difficulty understanding such environments. This study reports an experimental investigation of techniques that help auditors to identify incorrect management representations by developing expectations that are both accurate and adaptive to changing business conditions. My predictions suggest that analyzing a dynamic client environment through a systems perspective enhances information-processing ability, which then improves both evidence discrimination and the assimilation of new audit evidence. Results reveal that participants taking a holistic systems-based view of a client environment develop more coherently organized mental models that increase their likelihood of identifying management representations that are inconsistent with industry evidence. Furthermore, these participants more efficiently use their information-processing ability, thereby improving assimilation of newly learned evidence to understand how changing business conditions affect their initial expectations.