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This study investigates audit team stress, its triggers and consequences to provide qualitative evidence about what audit team stress is and how its triggers and consequences can influence team stress and audit quality. Audit teams in three different audit firms, including different audit team ranks, discussed team stress experiences from one specific engagement during group and individual interviews. Audit work can be stressful, and its consequences can threaten audit quality. Additionally, shared team stress differs from individual personal stress. This research discusses how audit team stress, its triggers and consequences can occur at an interteam stress level, when all team members experience the same stress, and at an intrateam stress level, when individuals feel stress from a team experience. Contributions are made to audit literature and practitioners about audit experiences at a team level and its influence on audit quality, including new insights about time budget pressures and auditor affect.

This paper uses unique survey data from a Swedish Big 4 firm to examine the association between audit quality threatening behavior (AQTB) and two types of distance between team members in audit teams (i.e., audit team distance): subjective distance as the perception of proximity, and communication distance as the percentage of communication via technology. Investigating the factors influencing AQTB is important because AQTB adversely affects audit quality. The results show that team members with greater subjective and communication distance engage in more AQTB, which suggests that audit firms should pay attention to team members' subjective and communication distances and take actions to curb their negative impacts. Using rich data collected from real-world audit team experience, this study deepens our understanding of how different types of audit team distance impact auditors' AQTB.

Purpose: This paper examines the association between audit quality threatening behaviour (AQTB) and three team equality dimensions: deindividuation, social identity and gender equality. Discrimination among auditors has been experienced in accounting firms across the world, which can lead to behaviour that risks the quality of work. The negative influence of this behaviour can have consequences for clients, audit firms, regulators and the wider society due to the threat on audit quality.

Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire was conducted at a Big 4 audit firm in Sweden. Members of audit teams that worked together on one specific engagement were asked to give their perceptions of their experience of equality and behaviours within the team. Hypotheses were tested using ordered logistic regression and PLS-SEM.

Findings: Audit teams that experience deindividuation conduct more AQTBs and audit teams with higher social identity conduct less AQTBs. However, the audit team’s social identity can moderate the audit teams’ experience with deindividuation and reduce AQTB.

Originality/value: With a unique data set of practicing audit teams, this study is the first to investigate how audit team equality is related to AQTB. Contributions are made to practitioners about audit team dynamics, since the AQTB occurs as part of the audit decision making process that influences audit quality. Inequality also has recruitment and reputation consequences. Thus, contributions are made to the audit market that is interested in audit quality. The study also contributes empirical evidence from an audit team context about behavioural outcomes and the SIDE model theory (Klein et al. 2007; Reicher, Spears and Postmes, 1995).