The Effects of Specialization in Audit Workpaper Review on Review Efficiency and Reviewers' Confidence
研究审计工作底稿复核中专业化分工（高级审计员负责机械错误、经理负责概念错误）对复核效率和复核人信心的影响，发现专业化并未提升效率，反而降低校准度，对审计实务有警示意义。
Accounting firms are currently re-engineering their audit processes with the aim of delivering a quality audit more efficiently. One area of potential efficiency gains is the sequential and hierarchical workpaper review process. This study examines the potential for specialization to improve review efficiency and reviewer confidence. Auditing literature advises focusing each review level on specific kinds of errors (i.e., seniors on mechanical errors and managers on conceptual errors), rather than having seniors and managers perform successive all-encompassing reviews. We find that seniors but not managers performing specialized reviews were more confident in their reviews. However, both seniors and managers performing specialized reviews required on average more time than those performing all-encompassing reviews. Additional analysis suggests that specialized reviewers were also less calibrated. We attribute these results to specialization interfering with auditors' mental model of review. The results suggest specialization will not automatically improve review efficiency, and that accounting firms may need to carefully evaluate any proposed changes to their workpaper review process.