Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business

Each year, Trulaske College of Business faculty participate in an internal research competition to pursue funding support for specific research projects. This funding provides a form of bridge support to allow further investigation of and pilot new research ideas during the summer months. This emerging research responds to timely issues rising up from the research body of knowledge and from current issues in business. 

Studying more than 10 years of comprehensive performance appraisal data from a large regional public accounting and consulting firm, this study identifies attributes of employees and supervisors associated with higher or lower quality feedback. This data also made it possible to measure the influence feedback may play in voluntary and involuntary turnover decisions.

This study explores how firms account for the transition tax applied to accumulated foreign earnings following the enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. In addition, the study examines whether and how earnings quality and the informativeness of effective tax rates are affected by this decision.

Using a large firm panel from 44 countries, researchers found that firms with greater comparability provide greater insurance to employees in response to a company-level, marketplace, consumer-facing demand (corporate sales) shock. In return, comparability increases employees’ willingness to accept a higher wage discount without sacrificing productivity.

Diversity may reduce groupthink and enable different perspectives to inform executive decisions. This can be vital to the two key functions of boards of directors: monitoring and advising. While research shows more tenure-diverse boards are better monitors of top management, faculty at Trulaske are now examining how diverse boards handle their advising roles.

Advances in sensors, artificial intelligence and cloud-computing have significantly changed organizations’ business processes. Increasingly, audit firms themselves must adopt similarly advanced technological tools and techniques in the audit process. These include data visualization, text mining, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. Researchers at Trulaske are developing ideas about what new standards might look like – adopting the term Audit 4.0 – to provide a starting point for gathering qualitative field data.

Do or should accounting firms respond to public allegations of non-work-related indiscretions, such as marital infidelity or substance abuse, leveled against executives and directors? For years in which indiscretion allegations are first publicized, auditors charge significantly higher fees, take longer to issue the audit report and are significantly more likely to resign from the client.