An Inductive Typology of Auditing Research*

DRIC LESAGE, HEC Paris, France CE HEIDI WECHTLER, Sorbonne Business School, France 1. Introduction Over the last 30 years audit practices have undergone what has been called an explosion (Power 1994), which has also extended to auditing research. An increasing number of auditing research papers have been presented at international conferences, new networks have been developed over the period (e.g., EARNet, the European Audit Research Network), and new journals dedicated to the publication of academic research papers in auditing have appeared (Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory in 1981, International Journal of Auditing in 1997). Besides growing in volume, auditing research has also explored a wider diversity of research themes and mobilized a wider range of theories and methodologies, enriching the auditing research eld (Mock, Watkins, Caster, and Pincus 1993). This growing complexity has made an overview of the whole auditing research eld increasingly elusive. A global picture of a specic complex domain in social sciences can be provided by typologies. Smith and Krogstad (1984, 1988, 1991) developed a seven-category typology (hereafter the SK typology1) in order to study the academic production of the journal Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory (AJPT). Their typology is considered a landmark for the organization of knowledge in auditing research. It has been used several times by other researchers for analyses of trends and comparison of research production. Alternative (although implicit) typologies can be also found in the ad hoc segmentation of research reports (e.g., Abdel-khalik and Solomon 1989, whose book, funded by a practitioners association, is divided thematically into ve chapters based on practitioner segmentation). Despite the usefulness and subsequent applications of the typologies proposed in past research, we have four concerns. First, the SK typology was drawn up in the early 1980s, and is arguably less efcient for structuring auditing research knowledge 30 years later, given the considerable changes in the quantity and diversity of auditing research themes. Second, the studies cited earlier concerned either a single journal, or a single period. To the best of our knowledge, no study has ever proposed a wider picture of auditing research, although computer-based tools of content analysis now make such a study possible. Third, previous typologies are concept-driven rather than data-driven classications; selected
* dric Lesage acknowledges the nancial support of the HEC Foundation Accepted by Dan A. Simunic. Ce (Project F0802) and the INTACCT program (European Union, Contract No. MRTN-CT-2006-035850). He is a member of the GREGHEC, CNRS Unit UMR 2959. Heidi Wechtler is a member of GREGOR, CNRS Unit EA2474. We thank W. Alissa, C. Ben Ali, S. Carmona, S. Jacobs, G. Le Pape, A. Loft, M. Messner, and H. Stolowy; participants at the Georgia State University workshop (2006), EAA (2007), AFC (2007), and EARNet (2007) meetings; the Associate Editor; and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. We also thank Ann Gallon for her much appreciated editorial help. The rst paper (1984) classied the rst three years of papers published in AJPT according to a simple list of 15 different topics. The 1988 paper (updated in 1991) was the rst to propose a structured classication in seven categories, with each category grouping different topics. It revised and reclassied the results of the 1984 study according to the new typology. Maijoor, Meuvissen, and Quadackers (2001) slightly extended the SK typology (nine categories instead of seven). In this paper, SK typology refers to this revised classication. The SK typology includes: (i) professional issues, (ii) rm administration, (iii) audit markets, (iv) audit education, (v) audit technology, (vi) audit process, (vii) reporting, (viii) internal operational auditing, (ix) other (literature analysis).

1.

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papers are allocated to a predened list of items, and this approach may generate a loss of information if papers on a new topic appear. Fourth, they are practice-oriented2 rather than research-oriented, meaning that certain themes unrelated to regular practices may dard 2001 dene as threatenbe ignored by practitioners (e.g., areas that Gendron and Be ing research). Fraud, for instance, is a topic that can be problematic for practitioners, and does not appear in the SK typology. Moreover, a practice-oriented classication may aggravate a concern raised by some researchers: one of the most critical issues for auditing research is the need to avoid being a hostage to professional concepts (Power 2003: 392). Our purpose is to propose an updated, inductive, and comprehensive typology of auditing research. Our study covers 25 main journals over all their years of publication from 1926 (for the oldest journal) to 2005, and uses a computer-based content analysis of the abstracts of 3,143 selected articles. We rst investigate how the identied keywords have changed since 1926, highlighting three key periods (periods concentrating sequentially on education, statistics, and corporate governance). We then provide a comprehensive typology of 16 major themes in auditing research, which updates and extends the SK typology. For each theme, we present the relative importance, signicant keywords and periods, and the main contributory journals. We then (i) analyze trends in the popularity of each research theme over time and (ii) examine the contribution of individual journals to each theme. Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR) appears to be the most signicant contributor to auditing research in terms of the number of themes published, and this conrms and expands on certain past ndings (see, e.g., Bonner, Hesford, Van der Stede, and Young 2006). The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Initially, we present our research design, using computer-based content analysis to build an inductive typology of auditing research topics (section 2). This is followed by our empirical ndings (section 3) and a discussion of application of the typology to an analysis of trends and their most contributory journals (section 4). Finally, we conclude the paper and suggest directions for future research (section 5). 2. Research method: A computer-based content analysis We analyze auditing research topics using content analysis, which can be considered as a kind of typological analysis (Weber 1983). Content analysis has many advantages, including the use of natural verbal expression as a database, and its adaptability to longitudinal studies if texts are presented over long periods (Kabanoff, Waldersee, and Cohen 1995). Content analysis strategy The scope of the study is based on the abstracts3 of articles published in 25 accounting journals considered the major peer-reviewed journals in the eld. The choice of abstracts as sampling units is justied by the following arguments. First, publications in research journals can be regarded as a strong and rigorous measurement of the output of a research eld (Dyl and Lilly 1985: 171; Whittington 1983: 385). Furthermore, a published research article is a formalized discourse on research conducted by the author(s), and the title and abstract in particular are worded to draw the attention of every reader likely to be interested in the subject of the article. Their compact form is extremely revealing about

2.

3.

Categories used in the SK typology were predened by the authors, who justied their choice by the practices of the profession: The topical categories reect issues of interest to the profession and are compatible with the general framework underlying audit practice (Smith and Krogstad 1988: 109). We carried out an alternative cluster analysis on titles. The title-based approach did not give signicant statistical results, which could be explained by the more varied abstract content compared to the title content.

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the researchers work, as the limited space for expression in a title or abstract forces the authors to select their words carefully, and furthermore the selected words are not chosen from a preestablished list (as may be the case with keywords). These two characteristics (selection and free choice) lead us to believe that analysis of the words used in the title and abstract should give a representative image of the full paper.4 We selected all papers containing the words audit, auditing, auditor or auditors in their abstract. We then rened that selection by removing book reviews, comments, authors replies to comments, editorials, and so on. This left a total of 3,143 abstracts (of 515 lines each) for indexing, dating from 1926 (creation of The Accounting Review) through the end of 2005. To control for inter-abstract variability, we measured a homogeneity-controlled scoring, dened as the number of nonredundant keywords per abstract.5 We found a strong homogeneity across journals and no signicant trend across time. Altogether, these results show that the abstracts in our sample are homogeneous and therefore comparable. The sample considered here is thus over three times as large as for the studies previously quoted, and extends over the whole period. Table 1 compares the scope of our study with that of Maijoor et al. 2001. As the top research journals are published in English, we used this language for the content analysis. Whilst we acknowledge that this may give English-speaking researchers signicant advantages over their nonEnglish speaking counterparts, it makes our study comparable with previous content analysis studies. Moreover, Carmona, Gutierrez, and Camara (1999) observed that the mobility of accounting research ideas across countries is overwhelmingly restricted to contributions written in English. Coding methods Given the large quantity of abstracts and the aim of meeting the reappropriability and replicability requirement, we selected the computer-aided approach (Kabanoff et al. 1995) as it reinforces face validity, especially when the coding involves a large number of categories (Jones and Shoemaker 1994). We use the SPAD-T software that automatically analyzes texts by associating numerically coded information. It counts words and segments using sort order tables and exclusion criteria such as length or frequency. The vocabularies contained in texts are compared using different types of factorial analyses and correspondence analyses. SPAD-T has recently been cited as a powerful content analysis software (Franzosi 2010), and previous literature in social science has already applied it to explore certain research themes (see, e.g., Spini, Elcheroth, and Figini 2009). To prepare for the statistical analysis and enhance its robustness, a computerized content analysis comprises several steps (as described in the appendix). First, all the words in the database (the texts of the 3,143 abstracts contain more than 14,000 different words) are listed with their frequencies; then, transparent words used only as grammatical tools in the sentence certain verbs (to be, to have), articles, conjunctions, etc. are eliminated from the dictionary;6 a lemmatization process (grouping together words segments that are synonymous, or related
4. Abstracts are generally written by the authors. However, in some cases, the publication does not contain any abstracts (JAR for instance until 2000). In such circumstances, we found that abstracts written by third parties are provided in the databases in electronic form. We found no cases of an article for which no electronic and or paper abstract was available. The homogeneity-controlled scoring measures the average length of the analyzed abstracts corrected from duplicate words or keywords. A homogeneous score over time and across journals enhances comparability. Here, the score has a mean of 22 (std = 4.07) and is normally distributed (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test: p < 0.01). Hence, 95 percent (2 r) of the sample is comprised between 14 and 30 keywords. To avoid eliminating words that are meaningful when incorporated into segments, we identied a list of 100 segments, obtained by compilation of the ISA glossary (IFAC-IAASB 2004) and an auditing course book (Hayes, Dassen, Schilder, and Wallage 2005).

5.

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TABLE 1 Comparative scope Nb. of articles Journal Advances in Accounting Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal Accounting, Business & Financial History Accounting & Business Research Abacus Accounting Horizons Auditing: A Journal of Theory & Practice Accounting, Organizations & Society The Accounting Review British Accounting Review Behavioral Research in Accounting Contemporary Accounting Research Critical Perspectives on Accounting European Accounting Review Issue in Accounting Education International Journal of Accounting Inter. Journal of Accounting Information Systems International Journal of Auditing Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance Journal of Accounting & Economics Journal of Accounting Literature Journal of Accounting & Public Policy Journal of Accounting Research Journal of Business, Finance and Accounting Journal of Int. Fin. Mgt & Accounting Total Notes: * ** MMQ: Maijoor, Meuvissen, and Quadackers (2001). EAR is the journal of the European Accounting Association. Abbrev. AA AAAJ ABFH ABR ABS AH AJTP AOS TAR BAR BRIA CAR CPA EAR IAE IJAC IJAIS IJAU JAAF JAE JAL JAPP JAR JBFA JIFMA 25 Country USA AUS UK UK AUS USA USA UK USA UK USA CAN USA CAN EUR** USA USA USA UK USA USA USA USA USA UK USA MMQ* 19901997 47 29 39 13 53 203 62 72 20 59 58 49 28 38 29 15 11 8 34 63 17 891 This study 95 55 25 125 62 145 481 131 616 46 79 162 93 115 92 43 21 142 145 49 21 79 256 55 10 3,143

to the same semantic group) follows; and, nally, a second elimination process removes words with low frequency (lower than 1 percent of the sample, which corresponds to 30 occurrences in our case). At the end of these processes, we obtain a nal dictionary of 481 words and segments (hereafter named keywords or kw)7. 3. Proposed inductive typology We rst report preliminary results on the trends concerning the most signicant words in our sample, then present our comprehensive inductive typology of auditing research topics.

7.

The words audit, auditing, auditor, and auditors were naturally eliminated, as they are nondiscriminant, since all selected papers were identied through the presence of these words. The word accounting was likewise eliminated due to its predominance.

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An Inductive Typology of Auditing Research

Figure 1 Quantity of audit papers between 1926 and 2005

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Figure 2
1930 Business Course Work School Asset

Representative keywords (19262005)

1940 Course Government Accountant Principles Student 1950 Accountant Department Course Government Contract 1960 Accountant Course Internal audit Operation Career 1970 CPA firm Course Student Budget Management 1980 Statistics Population Sampling Bayesian Academic 1990 Error Statistics Audit sample Model Consensus 2000 Market Environmental Inherent risk Lowballing Litigation 2005 Audit committee Earnings management Corporate governance Audit failure Country

Notes: The most representative keywords are selected after testing for signicance using a Students test (p < 0.05). The t-test gives the probability that the difference between the two means (of one period compared to the rest of the sample) is caused by chance. If this probability is less than 0.05, the difference is considered as signicant: the difference is not caused by chance but by the publication period.

Trends in popularity of the most representative words Figure 1 presents the increase in the number of papers since 1926. From a quantitative standpoint, the explosion in the quantity of auditing research articles since the 1980s should be noted, as well as the increasing number of academic journals (18 of the 25 journals in our sample were founded between 1976 and 1993). The last period is characterized by a quasi-absence of newly created journals in this eld (at least in our scope), but sees enormous growth in the number of auditing research articles (more than half were published after 1993). This result conrms what has already been observed by Zeff 1996 in the global accounting eld: As in many academic elds, the number of journals in accounting has been expanding. The trend has been for journals to become more specialized (Zeff 1996: 158) Figure 2 reports the most frequent keywords for each 10-year period (the last being only 5 years long, 20002005). This breakdown into periods and the nal dictionary enable us to analyze the themes across the whole 20th century, making it possible to draw up a
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comprehensive panorama of auditing research, with identication of topics and their popularity over the course of time.8 The characteristic vocabulary is illustrated for each period. We compare frequencies of words for a particular period with frequencies for the whole sample. Only words with signicant differences are presented here.9 Three different periods emerge which can be named the education period, the statistics period, and the corporate governance period. For a long rst period, marked by The Accounting Reviews monopoly, papers essentially concern education (kw: school, course, student). From the mid-1960s new journals emerge and alternative subjects appear, now related to the organization of the profession: audit rms (kw: CPA rm), the regulation process (kw: principles), and auditors themselves (kw: accountant). In the 1970s, a new theme appears that goes on to dominate the eld for two decades: statistics (kw: statistics, probability, Bayesian, population), with auditing-task-related concepts (kw: audit sample, sampling, error etc.). This statistics period wanes in the early 1990s, when a new cycle begins, focusing more on audit quality and corporate governance mechanisms. One popular theme in this cycle is auditors practices to develop their clientele (kw: lowballing) in an increasingly competitive environment (kw: market), which makes them assess their risks more widely (kw: inherent risk, litigation), with a focus on audit quality (kw: going concern, bankrupt). Then during the early 2000s, researchers become interested in the consequences of the risks taken by auditors; the focus shifts to scandals like Enron-Andersen (kw: audit failure), as well as the measures being taken to avoid such situations (kw: governance, audit committee), with an increasingly international (i.e., neither U.S. nor U.K.) dimension in studies (kw: country). Typology of research themes in auditing Moving on from studying the words alone, we now use the contingency table (displaying the frequency distribution of the variables in a matrix format (abstract*words)) with journals and periods as additional variables. We then perform a factorial correspondence analysis and use the identied factors for the cluster analysis.10 We obtain a classication in 8 clusters, which can be divided into 16 sub-clusters.11 This classication enables us to measure the importance and changing popularity of research topics, and the contribution of the different journals. Table 2 presents our 16-cluster typology with the most representative words, periods and contributory journals. Two major topics emerge from this typology,12 representing 74 percent of the academic literature selected in our scope. The rst can be named the Auditor-auditee
8. Analysis of trends over time in the frequency of words raises the question of ecological validity (Weber 1990), which refers to the ability to generalize the results to other times and settings. In our case, this relates to the stability of the meaning of words over time. We were able to cope with a change of signication for some words: for instance kw: Big 4 aggregates the original words Big 12, Big 10, Big 8, Big 6, Big 5, and Big 4. For all these words, the meaning is big audit rms or large audit rms, which are words already included in the Big 4 label. But, in general, we cannot assume that the words used during the 1930s still have exactly the same meaning today. We can only rely on what can be called meaning inertia due to the fact that auditing is highly regulated, and that changes in regulation always refer to past regulations, maintaining a strong continuity in a words meanings over time. We only retain keywords whose frequency score within the category (here, the period) is signicantly higher (bivariate t-test, p < .05) from its mean frequency score of the whole sample. We chose to keep only the factors with eigenvalues larger than the mean of eigenvalues. Cluster structure and interpretation remained unchanged with 50 percent or 100 percent of input factors. We check the validity of interpretations with the global Chi-square test on the contingency table, signicant at the 5 percent level. Around 30 percent of the variance is explained by 60 factors. In the case of correspondence analysis, eigenvalues are pessimistic indicators to measure the quality of the representation. We named the eight and 16 clusters identied by the SPAD-T software, based on the characteristic vocabulary of each cluster and the most representative papers, in a similar way to the labeling of factors in factor analysis.

9. 10. 11.

12.

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TABLE 2 Typology of audit research themes % 11% 19611965 19761980 19611965 19761985 19962005 Keywords Date Journals TAR, CPA, AOS, IAE, AH, JAAF AH, JAAF, CPA

8 clusters

16 clusters

Auditor-auditee relationship (52%) 15%

Profession (PROF)

Audit report & nancial statement users (REPO) International regulation (INTR) 5% 11% 19912005

EAR, CPA, AOS, IJAU, AH, ABR

Auditor-client relationship (CLT) 2% 6% 3% 4%

government, accountant, business, CPA, accounting profession, profession, professional, organization, social, public sector report, auditing standards, nancial statement, user, loan, communication, statements, accounting standards, bank, audit report country, Europe, international accounting, international, culture, harmonization, accounting standards, political national, regulation internal auditing, client, moral, ethics, job, commitment, perception, objectivity, pressure, negotiation 19811985 20012005 19812000 19861990 19962000 20012005

Non-audit services (NAS) Auditor-auditee contract (CONT) Liability & litigation (LITG) Corporate governance (CGOV)

AJPT, AOS, JAPP, IJAU, AH, AA, CAR JAR, CAR, AH, AJPT, AA JAR, CAR, JAAF, JAPP JAPP, JAAF, AA, CPA, CAR JAPP, IJAU, AH, ABR 19912005 ABR, CAR, AA, JAPP, JAAF, AJPT IJAU, ABR, EAR 19962005

Going-concern opinion (GCOP)

6%

An Inductive Typology of Auditing Research

Audit market (MRKT)

4%

non-audit services, fees, auditor independence, disclosure, client, purchase, restatement, services contract, agency theory, cost, equilibrium, price, lowballing, reputation, market, signal, ownership liability, court, litigation, law, negligence, legal, settlement, rule, decision, audit failure corporate governance, audit committee, board, director, committee, monitor, ownership, stockholders, nancial reporting, agency theory bankruptcy, going-concern, auditor-change, qualication, audit opinion, earnings, qualied-opinion, delay, auditor resignation, announcement Big 4, market, audit market, fees, audit fee, merger, concentration, audit rm, premium, competition

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(The table is continued on the next page.)

TABLE 2 (Continued) % 2% 6% 19611965 19762000 19611965 Keywords Date Journals TAR, AH, JAPP, CAR, JAAF IAE, TAR

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8 clusters

16 clusters

Tax audit (TAX)

Education (EDUC)

CAR Vol. 29 No. 2 (Summer 2012) 4% tax, compliance, penalties, income, uncertainty, asset, nancial reporting, revenue, adjustment, purchase course, student, education, academic, school, instruction, career, program, management accounting, training, learning statistics, sampling, audit sample, error, population, Bayesian, method, probability, estimation, inference 19761990 19761995 7% JAR, TAR, AJPT, ABR, CAR AJPT, JAR, CAR, AA 19912005 3% 12% error, analytic review, model, test, internal control, account, method, efciency, audit tasks, audit procedures fraud, risk, audit risk, inherent-risk, business risk, assessment, misstatement, detection, audit planning, auditing standards judgment, audit review, task, cognitive, senior, knowledge, experience, expert, heuristics, performance 19811995 AOS, JAR, AA, AJPT

Audit sampling (SAMP)

Audit methodology (22%)

Audit procedures (PROC)

Contemporary Accounting Research

AJPT, IJAU, AA, IAE

Fraud risk & audit risk (RISK)

Auditors judgment (JUDG)

Notes:

Results from the cluster analysis based on the 60 rst factors of the correspondence analysis. For each of the 16 clusters, the table presents the published articles frequency and the most signicant results (at the 1 percent level) in terms of keywords, dates, and journals (t-test analyses).

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relationship and represents 52 percent of the total sample. It covers different aspects of this concept, and its overall importance and noticeable presence throughout the studied period prove researchers constant interest in describing and understanding this crucial subject. Seven different themes are contained in this category (Profession, Audit report and nancial statement users, International regulation, Auditor-client relationship, Non-audit services, Auditor-auditee contract, Liability & litigation). The second important topic can be named Audit methodology and represents 22 percent of the total sample. This is a very old subject (the rst paper ever published in this group is Kirkham and Gaa 1939) that became very popular in the 1970s and 1980s. It concerns all research papers dealing with the auditors assessment and decision-making process, whether manual or computer-aided, and covers three themes (Audit procedures, Fraud risk and audit risk, Auditors judgment). Six individual groups complete the 16-cluster analysis. This individualization results from their very high internal consistency: Corporate governance, Going-concern opinion, Audit market, Tax audit, Education, Audit sampling. In contrast to previous studies, this typology combines a number of specialized reviews of literature into a single framework. For instance, the Auditors judgment theme appears to deal with research into the cognitive (kw: knowledge, cognitive, heuristics, experience) approach to judgment (kw: judgment, task, performance,audit judgment) at individual and team level (kw: senior, audit review, expert). This theme was very popular in the 1990s and mid-1980s (most signicant periods: 19911995, 19811985, 19861990), and the most representative journals are AOS, JAR, AA and AJPT. These ndings are consistent with Solomon and Trotman 2003, who identied a peak in judgment decision-making themes in 19911996, and for whom the focus of AOS auditing papers has been on judgment and decision experiments to a greater extent than all other scholarly accounting journals we examined (Soloman and Trotman 2003: 395). Our typology brings out certain themes not identied in the SK typology. For instance, there is no reference to International regulation in the SK typology. Moreover, a very hot topic like Non-audit services is not explicitly mentioned, as only kw: independence is listed in the SK typology. One illustration of the difculties of using a practiceoriented typology to represent auditing research could be given by the researchers interest in fees. This topic has been proved to be a large research stream (Hay, Knechel, and Wong 2006) since the seminal work of Simunic 1980. In our typology, the kw: fee is a characteristic word of the themes Audit market and Non-audit services. As a robustness check, we investigated whether a ctitious updated practitioner-oriented typology proxying for an updated extension of the SK typology could have included the kw: fee. We use the titles and abstracts of the ISAs provided by the IFAC website13 and the detailed tables of contents of two textbooks in auditing (Eilifsen and Messier 2006; Gray and Manson 2008) to create an updated version of a practitioner-based typology. None of them report any occurrence of the word fee. We explain this absence by the fact that the fee negotiation is not part of daily auditing practices: this topic cannot therefore be identied by a practice-oriented typology, although a more economic-centered research literature uses it as a core concept to illustrate the supply of audit work. Therefore, our argument is that an inductive typology, that is, based on the research itself, should provide a more relevant typology of research than a typology based on practices to an academic audience. This typology paints a global picture of the academic production of the 25 principal journals publishing auditing research from 1926 until 2005. By updating and generalizing previous specialized studies, it offers a unique typological framework to study auditing research.
13. Source: http://web.ifac.org/clarity-center/the-claried-standards.

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4. Applications In this section, we provide two applications of this typology by (i) focusing on trends in the popularity of the research themes and (ii) identifying which journals are the most signicant contributors to these themes. Trends in popularity of auditing research themes Despite the increasing interest in auditing research illustrated in Figure 1, little is known about the spread and evolution of auditing research themes. Our content analysis approach can advance understanding of their dissemination: Article counts, because they provide time-series data, may prove particularly useful when researchers study how forces external to the fashion-setting process shape management fashion supply and demand (Abrahamson 1996: 276). We therefore now focus on studying the trends in the research topics identied, considering that research themes are inuenced by fashion (Carmona and Gutierrez 2003). Table 3 illustrates the most signicant themes for each period. We notice a succession of signicant periods starting in the 1940s for the old themes (Profession, Education, and Tax audit), and continuing in the 1970s with the middle-aged themes (Audit sampling, Audit report & nancial statement users, Audit procedures). Modern themes then appear in the 1980s (Auditor-auditee contract, Auditors judgment) and 1990s (Non-audit services, Liability & litigation, Going-concern opinion, Auditor-client relationship, Fraud risk & audit risk, and Audit market), followed by contemporary themes in the 2000s (International regulation and Corporate governance). If we consider research themes as inuenced by fashion (Carmona and Gutierrez 2003), then the 16 auditing research themes appear at least partially interconnected by the collapse and elimination principle suggested by Abrahamson and Fairchild 1999 to explain fashions in management. Most contributory journals What are the most contributory journals to each auditing research theme? Table 4 presents the journals that contribute signicantly more on one or more themes (i.e., the predominance of the themes in these journals is statistically higher than the average publishing level in our full sample). First, we notice that only 14 journals have a signicant contributory position (the other 11 journals publish auditing research articles, but not in statistically above-average proportions). Some of these 14 journals have a large range of signicant contributions. They can be seen as non-specialist journals of auditing: CAR is ranked #1, signicantly contributing to 8 different signicant themes, followed by AJPT, AH and AA with 7 themes each. Conversely, some journals are very signicant contributors on one specic theme: CPA and EAR on International regulation, TAR on Profession, TAR and IAE on Education, AOS on Auditors judgment, AJPT on Audit procedures and JAR on Auditor-auditee contract. These journals can be considered as specialist auditing publications. We choose to analyze further the results for three journals: TAR, AJPT, and CAR. TAR merits discussion for two main reasons. First, it is the oldest and largest English-language periodical devoted to accounting research, and second, it is and has always been a leading journal in accounting research. Analysis of trends in auditing research themes signicantly published by TAR (see Figure 3, panel A) conrms Chatelds 1975 study on all of TARs publication during its rst 50 years. For instance, in the period 19361945, we identify the theme profession, with signicant keywords such as kw: practice, kw: accountant, which could be related to the associations new mandate [] to promote a dialogue on accounting principles (Chateld 1975: 4). TAR was the rst journal of the American Accounting Association (AAA), and its predominance in auditing research has declined as
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TABLE 3 Popularity of themes in auditing research

Notes:

An Inductive Typology of Auditing Research

Bertins graphical data analysis.The Bertins analysis rearranges the matrix to make structure in the data visible (Falguerolles et al., 1997). Here, cells present article frequencies and Chi-square tests were computed for each theme and period of time. We report the most signicant periods of time for each theme, with the following related p-values:

: p 0.01; : p 0.05; : p 0.1.

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TABLE 4 Most contributory journals

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Notes:

Bertins graphical data analysis.The Bertins analysis rearranges the matrix to make structure in the data visible (Falguerolles, Friedrich, and Sawitzki 1997). Here, cells present article frequencies and Chi-square tests were computed for each theme and period of time. We report the most signicant periods of time for each theme, with the following related p-values:

: p 0.01; : p 0.05; : p 0.1.

An Inductive Typology of Auditing Research

Figure 3 Production in volume (by theme) for AJPT, CAR, TAR

499

Panel A: The Accounting Review (TAR)

Panel B: Auditing: A Journal of Theory and Practice (AJPT)

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Figure 3

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(Continued)

PANEL C: Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR)

Notes: Profession (PROF), Audit report & nancial statement users (REPO), International regulation (INTR), Auditor-client relationship (CLT), Non-audit services (NAS), Auditor-auditee contract (CONT), Liability & litigation (LITG), Corporate governance (CGOV), Going-concern opinion (GCOP), Audit market (MRKT), Tax audit (TAX), Education (EDUC), Audit sampling (SAMP), Audit procedures (PROC), Fraud risk & audit risk (RISK), Auditors judgment (JUDG).

new journals have been created by the AAA to publish on more specialized themes. IAE, for instance, has taken over the Education theme from TAR, which has begun to publish work on a more diverse range of themes more recently. AJPT was launched in 1981 by the AAA Auditing Section to meet the growing need for auditing articles: From its inception, the objective of Auditing has been to promote a two-way ow between research and practice which will inuence present and future developments in auditing education, research and practice (Smith and Krogstod 1984: 107). The successive studies by Smith and Krogstad identied a strong predominance of the Audit technology and Audit process themes in this journal, according to the SK typology (see footnote 1). Our study conrms these ndings (Table 4): AJPT is very prominently placed in Audit procedures, and also a signicant contributor to Fraud risk & audit risk and Audit sampling. All these themes can be regarded as technical dimensions of auditing practice. But our results also show that AJPT is not only specialized in practice-related themes, but is also a signicant contributor on a wide range of issues in auditing research
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(see Figure 3, panel B): Auditor-client relationship, Non-audit services, Auditors judgment, and Going-concern opinion. From a quantitative standpoint, our ndings conrm previous studies that have illustrated the importance of CAR in the auditing research literature (see Figure 3, panel C). For instance, Bonner, Hesford, Van der Stede, and Young (2006) report that CAR has the largest percentage (29 percent) of articles devoted to auditing out of the top ve journals (AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, TAR) over the period 1984 to 2003. This high percentage of auditing articles was also observed by Carnaghan, Flower-Gyepesi, and Gibbins 1994, who measured a ratio of 23.6 percent of auditing articles published by CAR in its rst 10 years of existence, comparable to the ndings of Solomon and Trotman 2003. Our study adds more qualitative details to these quantitative results by highlighting the specic themes on which CAR is a signicant contributor. Analyzing Table 3 together with Table 4, it emerges that since its creation CAR has always been a strong contributor to each periods representative themes. CAR has very signicant scores for ve of the seven signicant themes of the decade 19811990, ve of the nine themes for the decade 19912000, and three of the seven themes for the 5-year period 20012005. It has clearly been a constantly important contributor for 20 years, although interestingly CAR does not signicantly contribute to either of the themes that can be regarded as emerging themes (Corporate Governance, International regulations; see Figure 2) as they are highly representative of the years 20002005 (see Table 3). 5. Conclusion, limitations, and future research We propose an inductive typology that identies the 16 main themes in auditing research, covering all the academic auditing research production published in 25 major journals. Compared with previous studies, our typology is the rst to be data-driven and covers the whole period between 1926 and 2005, comprising 3,143 auditing research articles. As a result, this new typology of auditing research themes provides a more representative picture of actual academic production than existing typologies, which are all based on a predened practitioners structure. As an illustration, we have applied it to analyze trends in research themes and the most contributory journals to auditing research. Our paper has certain limitations that could be tackled in future research: in particular, our sample is based on published articles from 25 journals, therefore neglecting other journals and grey literature. However, this inductive typology could be further applied to present a structured framework of auditing research, and to analyze trends and emerging issues in comparative and or longitudinal studies, research reports, and the like. Future investigations of the way research themes emerge and evolve should certainly contribute to a better understanding of auditing research.

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Appendix Coding protocol SPAD-T can process information automatically in most of the steps in the coding methodology. However, judgment is involved in the lemmatization step, that is, the phase where words segments that share the same semantic basis (as competent, competence, etc.) are grouped into the same keyword. We adopted the following procedures to reduce interpretation biases: (a) words segments with high frequency were kept as keywords (as illustrated by kw: nancial statement or kw: nancial reporting); (b) all groupings have a semantic basis (as illustrated by kw: competence); (c) groupings were double-coded separately by the co-authors with no signicant differences except for low-frequency groupings (<30); (d) in the event of disagreement, consensus between both coders was reached; (e) groups of words segments with a low frequency were eliminated; and (f) a dictionary based on the titles was established and compared; no signicant qualitative differences on audit-related specic vocabulary were found (although there are differences in frequency due to the higher number of words in the abstracts).
Segments Financial statement Financial statements => Financial statement Financial reporting Quality control standard Words Competence Competence-upgrading Competence-work Competencies Competency Competent Competently => Competence it is Frequency 196 106 302 99 3 Frequency 30 3 1 1 4 8 2 49 2272 566 Status Root word Equivalent word New keyword Original word Deleted Status Root word Equivalent word Equivalent word Equivalent word Equivalent word Equivalent word Equivalent word New keyword Deleted Deleted

Once the dictionary was built, all statistical calculations were performed by SPAD-T, including the clustering. The last judgment-based input relates to the names of the clusters, which were selected by the authors based on the 10 most characteristic keywords disclosed in Table 2 and discussed with colleagues. References
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