Auditors - Publications - Faculty & Research

Program

Audit Committees in a New Era of Governance

accounting, and risk management functions Improve transparency and the quality of audit and financial reporting Oversee legal and regulatory compliance more effectively Strengthen collaboration with corporate management and auditors... View Details

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Technology & Operations Management - Faculty & Research

how it it should refine its target market clients. Keywords: Climate Change ; Service Design ; Certification ; Auditing ; Auditor Reputation ; Carbon Credits ; Carbon ; Rating Agency Disagreement ; Ratings Citation Educators Purchase... View Details

Article

Preventing Fairness Gerrymandering: Auditing and Learning for Subgroup Fairness

By: Michael J Kearns, Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth and Zhiwei Steven Wu

The most prevalent notions of fairness in machine learning are statistical definitions: they fix a small collection of pre-defined groups, and then ask for parity of some statistic of the classifier (like classification rate or false positive rate) across these groups.... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Algorithms; Fairness; Mathematical Methods

Citation

Read Now

20 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Blind Spots: We’re Not as Ethical as We Think

Think back to recent events when people making unethical decisions grabbed the headlines. How did auditors approve the books of Enron and Lehman Brothers? How did feeder funds sell Bernard Madoff's invesments? We would never act as they... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

23 Apr 2024
In Practice

Getting to Net Zero: The Climate Standards and Ecosystem the World Needs Now

With each month clocking record-breaking temperatures across the planet, this Earth Day reflected the renewed urgency of regulators and businesses to find climate-change solutions. The US Securities and Exchange Commission recently adopted new rules that will mandate... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

10 Nov 2015
Blog Post

Using an MBA for a Career Change

Deloitte in New YorkPre-MBA career I never picked a major in college. I took the first one off the alphabetical list – accounting. I took the gig as an auditor at Deloitte in New York because “Sex and the City” was popular around that... View Details

04 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

Are the Big Four Audit Firms Too Big to Fail?

Are auditors becoming too big to fail? For over a decade, there have been articles and op-eds in the popular and business press arguing that the auditing industry, currently dominated by Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Accounting

09 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Industry Self-Regulation: What’s Working (and What’s Not)?

technological language between suppliers and customers. These standards are primarily business-to-business programs that can be certified by independent agents, similar to how external financial auditors certify a company's financial... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Organizing the Family-Run Business

way to organize and provide a voice for the shareholders. Shareholder meetings I believe should be annual, brief and rather formal, focusing on the election of board members and auditors and updating corporate by-laws. While these... View Details

19 Sep 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Isn't Business Research More Relevant to Business Practitioners?

MIT Sloan Management Review article, The Impossibility of Auditor Independence, which argued that “it is psychologically impossible for auditors to maintain their objectivity” and that “cases of audit... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

27 Feb 2017
Research & Ideas

Reputation is Vital to Survival in Turbulent Markets

economic shocks that could have a life-threatening impact on a large corporation. There also are stronger institutions to verify and confirm the strength and legitimacy of corporations, from accounting auditors to effective government... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

24 Feb 2022
Op-Ed

Want to Prevent the Next Hospital Bed Crisis? Enlist the SEC

accounting firms. Auditor opinions that are “qualified” or “adverse” can materially injure an organization’s credit worthiness and credibility, thus increasing its cost of capital. Accessibility. The SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering,... View Details

Keywords: by Regina Herzlinger and Richard Boxer; Health

01 Mar 2004
News

Derek Ferguson

a microphone, and an extensive record collection with money earned working for their father. Ferguson moonlighted as a DJ in college on the weekends to earn extra money but never considered a career in the music business. Instead, he worked as an View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries; Arts, Entertainment

12 Sep 2016
Research & Ideas

What Brands Can Do to Monitor Factory Conditions of Suppliers

Uncovering Bad Factories All three studies were made possible by a social auditing company providing Toffel with data on more than 40,000 inspections in 66 countries that its auditors had conducted over several years. The first study,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

13 May 2002
Op-Ed

A Cure for Enron-Style Audit Failures

account for transactions under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) while reducing transparency and aggressively maximizing earnings and debt. Creative accounting is part of the competition among auditors that has led to lower... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Lorsch; Accounting

05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

SEC Commissioner Sees “Healing and Reform”

the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in the Senate, said that the new law's value is that it helps eliminate conflicts of interest between auditors and a company's board of directors by decreeing that directors establish an independent... View Details

Keywords: by Catherine Walsh

Web

Cross-Registration | MBA

of Harvard University are eligible for Cross-Registration as auditors only. Please visit Course Planning Resources for details. Harvard, Tufts, and MIT undergraduate students are not eligible for Cross-Registration at HBS. Harvard... View Details

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1.9 Course Registration | MBA

forward are processed during Add/Drop. Add/Drop: request schedule changes during the first week of the term. Auditing Audit enrollment is rare in the HBS Learning Model and does not result in course credit. Each faculty member may decide whether to accept View Details

03 Mar 2003
What Do You Think?

Are Conditions Right for the Next Accounting Scandal?

auditors and audit committees whose mutual survival depends on each other, overly complicated accounting and tax systems, and the nature of the reporting relationships between internal auditors and those... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Accounting; Financial Services

03 Nov 2003
What Do You Think?

Can Investors Have Too Much Accounting Transparency?

auditing and particularly large amounts of consulting services from the same supplier. And now, by means of Section 404, it will: (1 require senior executives to certify that their companies have financial controls that work, and (2 give external View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Publications