Highpoint Audit Case Study

Section B (b)
The Experiment One conduct an experiment adapted from Blay (2005) which involve a going concern audit issue. Participants in Experiment One involve 92 auditor from multiple offices of three Big 4 audit firm which is 48 seniors, 29 managers and 15 senior managers. The range of audit experience are 3 to 13 years with a mean experience of 5.4 years. Overall, 80 percent of participants reported being involved in audit engagements where substantial doubt existed about the client’s going concern aassumption. While two-thirds of participants shown at least one audit engagement where going concern note disclosure was required and, on average, 60 percent of audit involving going concern doubt resulted in note disclosure. In general, participant
Participants in the stronger CI condition informed that the Highpoint has a more positive image due to its corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities that are praised (criticized) for environmental responsibility, community involvement, and treatment of employees. Besides that, Highpoint audit is more prestigious than most audits, and the audit partner communicates coordination with Highpoint to complete audit field work to emphasize the audit as a joint task between the audit team and
Participants in the heightened PI salience condition respond to survey questions about the CA website, its leading professional publication, CA Magazine, with its logo displayed, and an identity threat about a then-recent decision to allow other accounting professionals to issue audit opinions, a role historically served by CAs. However, for those in the not heightened PI salience condition will respond to survey questions about the Tourism Canada website with its logo displayed, vacation time, and a then-recent decision for stricter monitoring of travel between Canada and the U.S. In an effort to more strongly test theory, the manipulation is meant to heighten PI salience or have no effect on PI salience, without altering PI