Graduation Year

2004

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Granting Department

Business Administration

Major Professor

Uday Murthy, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Stephanie Bryant, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Rosann Collins, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Gary Holstrum, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Jacqueline Reck, Ph.D.

Keywords

creativity techniques, audit planning, group simulator; Jabri associative/bisociative scales, teams

Abstract

In the wake of recent corporate accounting scandals, auditors are encouraged to improve their method of fraud detection. Although Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 99 does not change the responsibility of the auditor for detecting fraud, it does provide new procedural requirements for assessing fraud risk, such as brainstorming among key team members about the potential for fraud. Using audit interns and internal auditors, this study empirically examines two interventions hypothesized to improve the quality of ideas generated by audit interns and internal auditors. In the first intervention, auditors use a computer-based group support system to brainstorm either non-anonymously or anonymously. For the second intervention, auditors were either trained to use a paradigm-modifying creativity technique or not trained. Additionally, it is hypothesized that the creativity training will have the greatest impact on brainstorming effectiveness when auditors brainstorm anonymously. However, the results suggest that audit interns working non-anonymously generated the greatest number of fraud ideas and also the greatest number of original ideas. Audit interns who received training on a paradigm-modifying creativity training technique generated the greatest number of unique ideas and received, on average, the highest usefulness to the audit process score.

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