Abstract This study utilized a modified version of Ivancevich and Matteson's Organizational Stress Model 1980 to examine the impact of time budget pressure on dysfunctional auditor behavior and to examine how several characteristics of audit team members might moderate the dysfunctional effects of time budget pressure. Characteristics examined included senior consideration toward staff auditors, senior structuring of staff job tasks, and senior and staff auditors' personality types as defined by the extent of their Type A personality traits. The descriptive results of the study show that an alarming number of underreporting and audit quality reduction acts are occurring in practice. The statistical results indicated an inverted U-shaped relationship between time budget pressure and underreporting of audit time. The results did not support the hypotheses that the above characteristics moderated the effects of time budget pressure. However, the results did indicate that staff auditors were less likely to underreport audit time when being supervised by seniors with lower Type A personality scores and that staff auditors engaged in less types of audit quality reduction acts when the senior used more structure in defining job tasks.
Kelley et al. (Thu,) studied this question.