Beyond the top seven firms: Gender diversity of audit firm partners and their undergraduate accounting faculty

For the past few decades, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) trend data show that women comprise the majority of accounting graduates from universities, yet the partner levels in accounting firms do not reflect this trend. In this paper, the authors leverage the disclosure of the engagement partner names for each public company audit on Form AP filed with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to explore the gender diversity and educational roots of the audit partners associated with audit firms that generated less than $1 billion revenue in 2019. Using role model theory, the paper explores whether there is a relation between the number of female professors in a school and the number of female students from that school who progress to the partner level. The results show that smaller audit firms have, on par, similar levels of gender diversity among audit partners as the largest accounting firms. The results further show a positive relation between females holding chair positions in accounting departments over extended time periods and female graduates progressing to partner on audit engagements. However, there is no association evident between the number of tenured female full professors and the female graduates who subsequently become audit partners at smaller accounting firms. These results highlight that female faculty holding power positions and female partners in the audit profession remain more rare than common. The need to increase gender diversity for both accounting faculty and professionals suggests that professional networking across academe and industry remains critical.

Files

Metadata

Work Title Beyond the top seven firms: Gender diversity of audit firm partners and their undergraduate accounting faculty
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Lydia N. Didia
  2. Renee Flasher
Keyword
  1. Form AP
  2. Audit partner
  3. Diversity
  4. Gender
  5. Regional and national audit firms
  6. Education
License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives)
Work Type Article
Acknowledgments
  1. We appreciate the research assistance of Ajay Dev, Divya Kuchimanchi, and Madison Dudek. We acknowledge a contribution from the participants of the 2019 Diversity Conference of the American Accounting Association.
Publisher
  1. Journal of Accounting Education
Publication Date June 1, 2021
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2021.100739
Deposited June 03, 2021

Versions

Analytics

Collections

This resource is currently not in any collection.

Work History

Version 1
published

  • Created
  • Updated Acknowledgments Show Changes
    Acknowledgments
    • We appreciate the research assistance of Ajay Dev, Divya Kuchimanchi, and Madison Dudek. We acknowledge a contribution from the participants of the 2019 Diversity Conference of the American Accounting Association.
  • Added Creator Renee Flasher
  • Added Creator Lydia N Didia
  • Added Female Engagement Partners NTC1 May 11 - Preprint.docx
  • Updated License Show Changes
    License
    • https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
  • Published
  • Updated
  • Updated
  • Updated Keyword, Publisher, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • Form AP, Audit partner, Diversity, Gender, Regional and national audit firms, Education
    Publisher
    • Elsevier
    • Journal of Accounting Education
    Publication Date
    • 2021-05-17
    • 2021-06-01
  • Updated Creator Renee Flasher
  • Renamed Creator Lydia N. Didia Show Changes
    • Lydia N Didia
    • Lydia N. Didia