| Providing assurance regarding the reasonableness of complex accounting estimates continues to be a challenge for auditors (PCAOB, 2016). Various mechanisms have been proposed to assist auditors in processing information surrounding these complex audit tasks, including cultivating a deliberative mindset (Griffith, Hammersley, Kadous, and Young, 2015) and providing documentation instructions that promote high-level construals (Rasso, 2015). Kadous & Zhou (2016) propose intrinsic motivation as a mechanism of behavior regulation to improve auditor performance in this area. Importantly, this prior research does not contemplate the effectiveness of proposed interventions in the face of workplace stressors commonly present in the audit environment. In contrast to the traditional conceptualization of intrinsic motivation (e.g., Amabile et al., 1994), I draw on self-determination theory (SDT) to experimentally examine how workplace stress interacts with alternative forms of autonomous motivation (both intrinsic and autonomous extrinsic motivation) to affect auditors' judgment in a complex audit task. My results indicate a two-way disordinal interaction effect of motivational orientation and workplace stress on auditor judgment. Under low levels of workplace stress, I find that increasing the salience of auditors' interest in and enjoyment of their job, which are defining elements of intrinsic motivation as conceptualized within SDT, does not improve auditors' judgment (i.e., reduce their reasonableness assessment of a biased accounting estimate), relative to a control group. However, increasing the salience of identified reasons for an auditors' job related to self-improvement and the common good, which are defining elements of autonomous forms of extrinsic motivation as conceptualized within SDT, does improve auditors' judgment, relative to a control group. Under high levels of workplace stress, this pattern is reversed; increasing the salience of auditors' intrinsic motivation does improve auditors' judgment, while increasing the salience of auditors' autonomous extrinsic motivation does not improve auditors' judgment, relative to a control group. This initial evidence has implications regarding future research on the appropriate match between auditor motivational orientation and the level of workplace stress. This study also highlights the utility of SDT in isolating different elements of motivational orientation that are confounded within the traditional intrinsic vs. extrinsic dichotomy and extends the theory by documenting differential outcome effects for alternative forms of autonomous motivation. |
