Auditors, Specialists, and Professional Jurisdiction in Audits of Fair Values
基于对28名审计师和14名估值专家的访谈，研究审计师如何使用估值专家来评估公允价值，发现机构压力导致审计师与专家之间的单向竞争，使专家工作服从审计师观点，专家被用作创造舒适感而非洞察力的机制。
ABSTRACT Auditors frequently use valuation specialists to help them evaluate fair values, but researchers and regulators know little about how auditors use these specialists. Based on interviews with 28 auditors and 14 valuation specialists, I develop a theoretical framework informed by expert systems and professional competition theories. The interviews suggest that institutional pressures in the fair value environment unevenly impact auditors and specialists, causing tension between auditors' needs for ontological security and jurisdictional claims. This tension leads to one‐sided competition between auditors and specialists and incomplete acceptance of specialists' work. Auditors' competitive behaviors coupled with this incomplete acceptance result in a tendency to make specialists' work conform to auditors' views. Collectively, these findings suggest that auditors use specialists as an institutional mechanism to create comfort, but not insight. This study links expert systems and professional competition theories, and it provides critical insight into some assumptions underlying tenets of each theory. It also informs researchers, regulators, and practitioners interested in understanding and addressing problems related to the use of specialists.