Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

College of Business and Economics

Department

Accounting

Committee Chair

SCOTT FLEMING

Committee Co-Chair

RICHARD RILEY JR

Committee Member

RICHARD RILEY JR

Committee Member

KIP HOLDERNESS JR

Committee Member

CHRISTOPHER SCHEITLE

Abstract

This dissertation is made up of three studies that look at fraud from three different perspectives. The first study looks at fraud from the perspective of the perpetrator. The second study examines fraud from the whistleblower’s perspective. The third study studies fraud from the perspective of the investigator (internal auditor).

Study one utilized an online experiment via Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk) to look at whether technology has a psychological distancing effect on humans, and how that may affect individuals to commit fraud. In addition, the study also examines how one’s familiarity with technology, measured via iPhone screen time, can moderate the relationship between the psychologic distancing effect of technology and fraudulent or unethical behavior. Results show a moderate significant effect for the interaction, indicating that for those who are less familiar with technology, their behavior did not differ regardless of which group they were in, whereas those who are more familiar with technology behaved more ethically in the more real (low technology) group. This study contributes to the fraud literature by demonstrating an advantage to hiring more tech-savvy employees in terms of ethical behavior within the workplace.

Study two also utilized an online experiment on M-Turk to examine whistleblowers. Specifically, the study manipulated the tone of code of conduct (positive versus negative) and measured other traits (e.g., narcissism, perception of self-ethics, and ethics of other employees) while participants were presented with an opportunity to blow the whistle on a fraud they were witnessing. Results show that the tone of the code and some traits do play a role in determining whether an employee decides to delay blowing the whistle or not. For example, in mediation analysis a negative tone increased perception of termination for violations of the codes and hence caused participants to report earlier. In addition, males and more educated were more likely to delay whistleblowing. This study contributes to the whistleblowing and framing literature as it documents how the framing of the codes could affect the ethical behavior of whistleblowing.

Study three utilized three paper-based experiments with a group of accounting professionals/internal auditors. The three experiments looked at how level of detail, framing of future promotion, and supervisor’s emotional intelligence may affect the choice of project to investigate a potential fraud, how serious a project is rated, and how much in resources should be allocated to the project. In addition, the study also looked at other personality traits like trust and narcissism. Results show that level of detail does matter as individuals that perceived more detail in a potential whistleblower tip tend to rate a higher seriousness and allocated more resources. However, in experiments 2 and 3 the choice of projects was not affected by framing or supervisor emotional intelligence, but instead additional analysis revealed an interesting interaction between choice of project and the experiment manipulation on the amount of resource allocated to projects. This study contributes to several fields (auditing, fraud, and psychology) as it documents the effect of source credibility, framing and supervisor emotional intelligence on fraud investigators, which could help companies provide additional training on what to say when blowing the whistle, and what type of supervisors they should hire.

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