Auditors at annual general meetings: a micro-perspective on the diffusion of accountability

Purpose In 2023, the Dutch professional institute revised its guidance for auditor presentations at annual general meetings (AGMs), encouraging more transparency and enhanced communication with shareholders. This paper studies how auditors have enacted this guidance and hence how accountability is constructed at shareholder meetings. Design/methodology/approach The paper analyzes 20 auditor presentations and question-and-answer sessions at AGMs held in 2024 by listed Dutch entities. We investigate the micro-foundations of accountability through a three-pronged focus on situational, individual, and transformational mechanisms. Findings Our analysis reveals that auditors cautiously enact the revised guidance, furnishing some additional information while aiming to reassure shareholders about the opinion rendered. We also find that pertinent social facts penetrate the AGMs and become issues of contestation. Shareholder attention shifts from gaining insights into the audit work conducted, as intended by the professional guidance, and toward auditors’ public interest role. Auditors hence become accountability subjects and rely on company boards to repair the disruption. Originality/value The paper reveals that external developments can become consequential for AGM interactions and upend the roles enacted in these meetings. Rather than functioning as shareholders’ monitor, auditors may come under scrutiny for fellow professionals’ conduct. Company boards become allies of auditors, as they work together to mitigate shareholder dissent. The paper makes visible practical enactments of accountability, which is reconfigured in unintended ways by blurring and inverting the roles commonly assigned to AGM actors.