This paper provides such a comparison, focusing on IT s ability to empower the workforce. The research queried high-level American managers who each spent a full year working for a Japanese company. Established theoretical constructs are used to analyze and explain the findings. This paper investigates the effects of accountability and time budget pressure on the extent and nature of auditor s hypothesis testing and diagnostic accuracy. An improved understanding of the effect of these factors is important to auditing practice where the tradeoff between effectiveness and efficiency is a vexing problem.
Accountability imposes significant pressures to obtain a high level of effectiveness.
However, public accounting is a business, and costs must be contained. Time budgets serve to promote greater efficiencies but, if too restrictive, may reduce effectiveness. The results indicate that accountable auditors subject to time budget pressures reduce the depth, but not the breadth of testing. The imposition of time budget pressure on accountable auditors only marginally impaired decision effectiveness. Further, findings suggest that accountability causes auditors to focus on testing risk hypotheses.