Auditors’ Strategic and Conflicting Responses to CPAB Inspections : Acquiescing, Compromising, Avoiding

Based on a series of 27 semi-structured interviews conducted with audit partners and managers in Canada, our study examines how audit firms have responded and adapted to the implementation of CPAB inspections. We show that CPAB inspections have resulted in the emergence of a new and autonomous regulatory logic. This transformation has triggered an increased pattern of institutional complexity for firms revolving around three logics generating conflicting normative views and strategic prescriptions with respect to firm's perceptions and responses to inspections: regulatory logic; commercial logic; and professional logic. Accordingly, firms attempt to balance their commitment to the inspection process through equally conflicting strategies. They acquiesce to the regulatory logic by changing organizational processes and developing the role of Quality Experts as one of their main resources in crafting and enacting firms' compliance. They compromise between regulators' expectations and pressure arising from the commercial and professional logics by covering the costs of inspections and negotiating inspection findings. They resist regulatory pressure through avoidance tactics, trying to conceal possible points of contention behind the production of carefully scripted relationships. Unlike studies who emphasize the strong control of the PCAOB over the inspection process, we argue that in a context of increased institutional complexity, Canadian firms benefit from a greater flexibility and repertoire of actions in their responses to CPAB inspections. The rise of Quality Experts and the emergence of a self-governing regulatory logic also constitute institutional game changers that may transform in great depth the current power structures within firms