auditing stories about discomfort: becoming comfortable with comfort theory
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This article was downloaded by: [University of Hong Kong Libraries]On: 13 November 2014, At: 16:25Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
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Auditing Stories aboutDiscomfort: BecomingComfortable with ComfortTheoryThomas Carrington a & Bino Catasús aa Stockholm University School of Business , SwedenPublished online: 24 Apr 2007.
To cite this article: Thomas Carrington & Bino Catasús (2007) Auditing Stories aboutDiscomfort: Becoming Comfortable with Comfort Theory, European Accounting Review,16:1, 35-58
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09638180701265846
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Auditing Stories about Discomfort:Becoming Comfortable withComfort Theory
THOMAS CARRINGTON & BINO CATASUS
Stockholm University School of Business, Sweden
ABSTRACT The sociological strand of auditing research has pointed to some difficultiesof the American Accounting Association’s (AAA) (and mainstream) definition assertingthat auditing is about ‘objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regardingassertions about economic actions’ (AAA, The Accounting Review, Suppl., 1972, p. 18).Instead, auditing has been described as rituals of verification that produce comfort. Inthis paper we seek to widen the understanding of the production of comfort byinvestigating the processes that end up as an audit. The processes are investigated byaddressing the research question: how do auditors perceive the production of comfort?Twenty seniors were interviewed on the subject of identified discomforts in the auditprocess. The interviews were designed to identify the main allies and foes in theprocesses that make up an audit. In the presentation of the interviews, comfort theory isemployed as a device to interpret the seniors’ statements in terms of comfort as state,comfort as relief and comfort as renewal. Our conclusion is that the state of comfortthat is demanded to become comfortable with an audit changes in relation to whichactors get involved in the comfort production. Attaining a state of comfort involves adecision that sufficient discomforts have been relieved. In addition, as the definition ofwhat it means to attain a state of comfort changes, more or less comfort as relief isrequired, and the audit, understood as becoming comfortable, is renewed. Suggested bycomfort theory, the paper in this way develops the idea of auditing as a comfort-producing activity by examining three dimensions of audit comfort.
Introduction
The sociological strand of auditing (e.g. Pentland, 1993; Power, 1999; Humphrey
and Owen, 2000) has broadened the American Accounting Association’s (AAA)
European Accounting Review
Vol. 16, No. 1, 35–58, 2007
Correspondence Address: Thomas Carrington, Stockholm University School of Business, SE-106 91
Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]
0963-8180 Print=1468-4497 Online/07=010035–24 # 2007 European Accounting AssociationDOI: 10.1080/09638180701265846Published by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis on behalf of the EAA.
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(and mainstream) definition of auditing as being about ‘objectively obtaining and
evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions’ (AAA, 1972,
p. 18). One of the first studies to apply an alternative perspective of auditing is
the study of Brian Pentland (1993) in which he argues that auditing should be
viewed as a ritualistic process of producing comfort at the micro-level. This
comfort production activity, in turn, makes possible the macro systemic function
of trust in numbers. For Pentland (ibid.), the idea of producing comfort stands out
as the main objective of an auditing endeavor and he suggests that auditing is an
activity that transforms the financial statements of corporate management from
an inherently untrustworthy state into a form that the auditors and the public
can find comfortable. Later, Kosmala MacLullich (2003) argues in the same
way by suggesting that the lack of trust in society creates a need for comfort
and that ‘[i]nstead of control, the emphasis is on comfort of being reassured
through means of audit’ (ibid., p. 808). From this perspective, then, auditing is
primarily about producing comfort about the numbers to the auditors, to the
firm, to the capital market and to society.
Producing comfort is not only the sought after result of an audit, comfort pro-
duction is also important in the actual auditing process (Pentland, 1993). In fact,
Pentland (1993) found that the auditors discussed the ‘production of comfort’
rather than the ‘production of proof’. Comfort, then, acts both as the relay
baton passed between the auditors on an assignment and between auditors and
the actors in the capital market. The sign of success of an auditing effort is, in
this mode of thinking, attaining comfort on many levels. Power (1999) argues
that auditing has been institutionalized as a provider of comfort but that we do
not know enough about the processes that lead to comfort (Power, 1995; see
also Gendron, 2002). Summing up his discussion on the audit society, Power
(1999, p. 123) argues that in practice ‘auditing has a character of a certain
kind of organizational script whose dramaturgical essence is the production of
comfort’. The question is how do auditors write this ‘organizational script’. Alter-
natively, reformulated as the research question of this study: how do auditors per-
ceive the production of comfort?
In Pentland’s (1993) study of how auditors get comfortable with numbers, the
idea of patriarchal settings (e.g. ‘priests’) and acts of a ceremonial character (e.g.
‘the sacred signature’) play a major role. According to Pentland (ibid.), auditors
consider the production of comfort as the production of an article of trade being
moved from one individual to another and from one group to another. This trans-
mission of comfort ultimately leads to the audit opinion. The argument presented
by Pentland (ibid.) rests on it being the ritual per se that legitimates the opinion
expressed in the report. Although this view is beneficial in highlighting the pro-
cedural, hierarchical and symbolic aspects of auditing it risks missing that ‘the
production of comfort is negotiated’ (Power, 1999, p. 40) and that comfort is
not ostensively there. Rather than seeing comfort as a fixed commodity,
another view is to direct the interest to how comfort is constructed, defined
and changed. Such a perspective would contribute to a possibility to move
36 T. Carrington & B. Catasus
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beyond seeing comfort as a binary concept and unfold aspects of how auditors
relate to comfort in relation to discomforts. In addition, by qualifying how
comfort is produced, it is possible to examine if there are some actors that are
specifically important in influencing how comfort is attained, what discomforts
are acceptable and how levels of comfort change.
The empirical inquiry at hand has the power to increase our understanding of
the audit process and adds to the elusive (and binary) understanding of the pro-
duction of comfort. In order to display different aspects of comfort we need to
develop a framework for analyzing the empirical corpus. Our ambition with
this paper is to present what auditors (say they) do and interpret these statements
in a theoretical framework that includes a qualified view of comfort. That is,
the aim of the paper is to examine and develop the idea of auditing as a
comfort-producing activity by employing a framework building on a theory of
comfort production.
In the following we, first, present the theoretical framework applied in this
study. The framework takes a starting point in comfort theory developed by
Kolcaba and Kolcaba (1991). Second, we discuss the design of the study. This
section is specifically concerned with how data was obtained and interpreted.
The following three sections present the data and the analysis of how auditing
is a comfort-producing activity. In the final section, we discuss the contributions
and the caveats with this study.
A Framework for Studying Comfort
The concept of comfort is not only central in auditing but also in nursing practice.
The American Nurses Association describes nursing as ‘the diagnosis and treat-
ment of human responses to actual or potential health problems’ (Lavin et al.,
2004, p. 41). Nurses provide comfort to patients and to their families through
interventions that may be called comfort measures. In this paper, we make use
of the ideas from nursing theory. Further, as one of the present authors was
told in an introduction course at one of the major auditing firms, ‘We call
them clients because they are not customers and they are not patients.’ Albeit
there are differences between the nursing and the auditing profession, the idea
of relief from discomfort is an obligatory point of passage for the two professions.
In nursing theory Kolcaba and Kolcaba (1991) have presented a comfort theory
that is open for a qualified understanding of the concept and Kolcaba et al. (2004,
p. 93) conclude: ‘[c]omfort is a positive outcome that differs and is more than the
absence of discomforts’. Comfort, in this strand of science, is more than a binary
concept.
In practice and etymology Kolcaba and Kolcaba (ibid.; see also Kolcaba,
2003) find six meanings of comfort from which they derive three technical
senses of comfort relevant in nursing theory: (a) the state sense, (b) the relief
sense and (c) the renewal sense. These three aspects serve as an initial classifi-
cation scheme of comfort for this study.
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. The relief sense of comfort is directed towards the acts that relieve discomforts.
By relieving discomforts, a non-acceptable state of comfort can be turned into
an acceptable state. Relief refers therefore to the acts that aim at eliminating
discomforts.
. The state sense of comfort describes all possible outcomes of comfort. The
state of comfort does not presuppose complete absence of discomfort, but
rather is determined by the conditions that build comfort. The state sense
suggests that at any moment of time there are both comforts and discomforts
present and the state sense of comfort is the inventory of comforts and
discomforts.
. The renewal sense of comfort is characterized by a revitalization of how
comfort is perceived. Renewal, consequently, is about new perceptions of
acts that relieve from discomforts and new perceptions of the state of discom-
forts and comforts.
There are, however, fundamental differences between nursing and auditing
practice in relation to the production of comfort. One important difference is
that in a nursing setting the patient’s perception is decisive for which level of
comforts and discomforts that is deemed as acceptable. In an auditing setting,
the auditor decides when the numbers have moved from an untrustworthy state
into a form that they can find comfortable. That is, the auditor’s quest is to
make the call whether s/he is comfortable with the numbers or not. An auditing
effort has, contrary to nursing practice, a clear delineation point: the auditor
signs-off or s/he does not. As a result, we need to revisit comfort theory and
suggest how the three states of comfort may be applied to auditing.
In auditing, the relief sense of comfort is understood as the acts that move the
auditor from a state of uncomfort1 to a state of comfort. That is, comfort as relief
frames what the auditors do to relieve from discomforts and become comfortable.
The relief sense, consequently, highlights the practice of audits and, more specifi-
cally, about teasing out the acts that are obligatory to perform.
Comfort as state relates to the situation when the relevant actors have been
convinced and when it is time to close the books and give an audit opinion.
Comfort as a state highlights a situation where sufficient efforts have been
invested to be able to give an opinion. Most often, the state of comfort determines
at what state the audit surpasses the line to produce a clean sheet. Consequently,
this view acknowledges that auditing is not about reaching a 100% assurance of
the audited number and that the auditing rationale is to accept some discomforts.
Comfort as a state is about finding the situation where the auditors are comfort-
able enough with the numbers to give a (positive) opinion.
Translated into the audit setting, the renewal of the state of comfort relates to
new definitions of what is an acceptable audit: what the auditor is comfortable
with in one place or during one period might change. Renewing the audit has
been in the forefront of the agenda for quite some time now. The recent debate
on whether auditor rotations enhance audit quality may serve as an example of
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the renewal sense of comfort (Myers et al., 2003). The simple tenure–audit
quality relation suggests that an auditor is less likely to sign a qualified audit
report if s/he has been the company’s auditor for a longer time. The argument
rests on the idea that there is no renewal of the level of where the auditor
reaches a state of comfort. Comfort as renewal concerns the change in the defi-
nition that determines the state of comfort.
Three questions emanate from this application of comfort theory and our
research question:
. What do auditors do to become comfortable?
. When is the audit finished in terms of the auditors being comfortable enough?
. How does the level of reaching comfort change over time and in other settings?
By introducing comfort theory, we have made an effort to qualify our under-
standing of the actors who influence the level of comfort, how comfort is attained
and how the comfort level differs. An analogy of a high jumper may help illust-
rate comfort theory as applied here. The height of the bar is where the state of
comfort is set in every particular audit (or even account). The auditor has to
succeed in attaining this height to attain a comfortable state. Comfort as relief
concerns what it takes the auditor to reach this height and how s/he goes
about doing it. For the high jumper this may imply a certain type of shoes and
a specific distance for the run-up. The changes in the level of comfort can be
understood as changes in the height of the bar. This situation corresponds to
the notion of comfort as renewal. The approach nevertheless raises a vexing ques-
tion: what is the starting point for auditors? And, even more problematic (since it
is at the core of this paper), the height of the bar is not observable from the blea-
chers. Consequently, the auditor ‘jumps’ but there is no saying how high.
In our application of comfort theory, we apply a constructionist perspective
and, accordingly, subscribe to the idea that what auditors do, when they are fin-
ished and how this changes in time and place is continuously negotiated and re-
constructed. As a result, we need to have an empirical corpus containing auditors’
perspectives on their practice and thereby reflecting all three aspects of comfort.
Design of the Study
Latour and Woolgar (1979), Callon (1986, 1998) and Latour (1987, 1999) have
reminded us that studies on the production of knowledge (like studies of the audit
processes) should not neglect any actor involved in the process. Certainly, this
paper does not fully apply the imperative emerging from the actor–network
theory (ANT); that is, the paper does not follow the chains of translations
between actors in the auditing process. Nevertheless, ANT has been a valuable
input in detecting actors and networks of actors. Put differently, even though
the auditor is central to this investigation, many other actors are involved as
well. In practical terms, this has led us to study how auditors use and dismiss,
Auditing Stories about Discomfort 39
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embrace and oppose other actors in order to produce comfort. One of the contri-
butions from ANT is that all actors are equally important and an actor is literally
anything that ‘does modify a state of affairs by making a difference’ (Latour,
2005, p. 71). For us this means that it is valuable to report both persons and
things that were mentioned as grounds for discomforts.2 Still, our investigation
has to follow a specific actor and see what other actors are involved in producing
comfort.
In this search of the production of comfort, we targeted non-signing auditors,
that is, the auditors beneath the top in the chain of command of the audit team
(Messier, 2003). That is, we singled out one specific role of the non-signing audi-
tors, namely, those auditors that have between two and five years of experience in
the profession but have not yet attained signing privileges. These auditors are
called seniors by most of the firms3 and below we label all the auditors in our
investigation as seniors.
We wanted to access a large number of seniors and because one of the authors
used to work in an audit firm, the access was initially directed towards former
colleagues and their colleagues. Further, in order to look for the production
and use of comfort we wanted to focus on an actor that had both experience
(thus ruling out the assistants) and was not the official accountable actor (thus
ruling out signing auditors). Audit seniors and audit managers have a middle
manager role and studies of middle managers (Fenton-O’Creevy, 2001) reveal
that they need to be concerned with both top management and with the assistants.
Thus, audit senior and audit managers are in the midst of the net of relations in the
audit team.
In addition, as a resource lacking the power to make the final decision, it might
still be demanded that one has to see to it ‘that everyone is comfortable’ (Scovill,
1938, p. 358). Our goal was to follow the actor that was closest to the building
blocks that make up the practice of checking and controlling the numbers, that
is, the perceived practice of the auditor. Seniors have also been the target of
choice for the greater part of the literature of audit quality reduction behavior
(Kelley and Margheim, 1990, 2002; McDaniel, 1990; Malone and Roberts,
1996; Otley and Pierce, 1996a, 1996b; Herrbach, 2001, 2005). One reason is that:
in recognition of their key position in the control structure of audit firms,
seniors were selected as the target group for the study. Audit seniors are
around mid-point in the firm’s hierarchy, and occupy the most pressurized
position in the firm.
(Kelley and Seiler, 1982, quoted in Otley and Pierce, 1996a, p. 70)
Twenty seniors have been interviewed. One of the authors knew 10 of these
before the interview. The respondents represent all of (and only) the ‘big four’
firms and they were assigned both to small and large firms and public organiz-
ations. The interviews took approximately one hour and were made at places
where the seniors felt comfortable (sic) talking about the potential sensitive
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area of situations where they personally had experienced hindrances in the audit
process. Typically, this was outside the office. None of the auditors rejected our
request to interview them despite that most of the interviews were being made in
the middle of the auditors’ busy season, that is, January and February.
The questions were directed to stories of situations where the seniors perceived
the audit to be unfortunate, insufficient or a plain failure. That is, we were looking
for stories of discomfort. This approach thus bears similarities to Sweeney and
Pierce (2004) and Herrbach (2005), and to some extent to Lee (2002) in their
studies of audit quality reduction behaviors. We also paid attention to the idea
of how the audit moved on from these difficulties: how comfort nevertheless
was attained (if at all). In practice, the discussion evolved around the seniors’
experiences of hindrances and supporters in relation to the production and use
of comfort. When the auditors allowed it, we recorded the interview session.
In order to point to the issue at hand we initially let the seniors talk about situ-
ations in which they had perceived hindrances in the audit process, whatever
these might have been.
To direct the attention to the seniors’ suggestions about discomfort we also
used the ‘if-only’ interviewing technique suggested by Catasus et al. (1997).
By asking the auditors to talk about comfort and start the sentences with ‘if
only’, it was possible to prompt the auditors to suggest what would turn a state
of uncomfort into a state of comfort and to illustrate what hindrances they per-
ceive as problematic. Typically, we would start a sentence with ‘If only the
audit . . .’ and then ask the auditor to fill in the blanks. The technique used was
primarily in the beginning of the interviews and as the interviews went on the dis-
cussion evolved around the seniors’ statements. On the one hand, the ‘if-only’
technique may direct the seniors to speculate about issues that go beyond their
experiences and to focus on the comfort creation of the audit. On the other
hand, the technique may contribute to openness in describing problems and sol-
utions that go beyond the official script. In our view, the technique did not lead to
speculation but created an atmosphere where any issue was possible to discuss. In
addition, the technique was a means to get the seniors to talk freely about impe-
diments at work, something that seniors might not want to share being in a crucial
stage of their professional career. Albeit, the ‘if-only’ technique was valuable in
getting the interviewee on track, it did seldom prompt quotes of direct interest to
the investigation. In fact, the sentences that were started with ‘if-only . . .’ were
seldom interesting but seemed to be a good start since the discussion following
the initial statement was more to the point than before the intervention.
As a final intervention, we told the seniors about an interview we made with a
CFO before starting this project. The story the CFO told us was one about hiding
sensitive issues using the tight time schedule only to disclose them at the last
minute. The purpose of this story was to induce the respondents to re-focus on
their relationship with their clients. This intervention did re-focus the interest
on discomforts not only in terms of the CFO but also in general and the CFO
was a common ground of discussion even before the intervention. Nevertheless,
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it cannot be ruled out that the interventions influenced the interviewees, causing
bias towards more comments on the interactions between the senior and the CFO.
The seniors showed a willingness to share their experiences. During the inter-
views the seniors seldom pinpointed any of their clients’ names and in the rare
case they did, we agreed not to target any particular company. The seniors
talked freely about failures and successes, which we believe can be explained
by the choice of seniors (i.e. non-signing auditors) as well as the choice of
method.
Stories about Discomfort
Comfort as Relief
The concept of comfort as relief is about the acts that enable attaining a state of
comfort. The relief sense of comfort is illustrated by the actions and interactions
that the seniors do to move from a situation characterized with a number of dis-
comforts to one in which they are comfortable with the numbers and the audit. In
getting started with this relief of discomforts, the seniors tend to make visible
their work. When asked to fill in the blanks in the sentence ‘If only we found
something . . .’ the seniors smiled and one made the following comment: ‘If I
don’t find anything there has been no audit.’ An indicator of the audit being
present, much like academic reviews, is about finding errors and being able to
suggest improvements. Several seniors witnessed that it is crucial to find
unclear issues. Thus, the starting point of any audit is that of discomfort and a
means of getting relief is to find and disclose some of these discomforts:
Well, I always try to find something. I would feel useless if I did not find
anything.
Although the seniors in our study described it comforting to find discomforts,
the search for discomforts is not an act carried out in solitude. The seniors
describe a situation where they are highly dependent on input from the audited
firm:
The most important issue is if the CFO and the crew at the company are
willing to help.
Without the cooperation of the CFO4 and staff, the road from finding discom-
forts to reaching comfort would be very bumpy and hard (cf. Sweeney and Pierce,
2004). This was a view held by all the interviewed seniors. Finding and relieving
discomforts are, accordingly, not acts that seniors can do by themselves; relief is
a joint product. The importance of having a good (or fair) level of cooperation
with the client is also supported in some of the literature on audit independence
(Jeppesen, 1998; Power, 2000b). The client is important not only as an
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information resource (answering questions and providing numbers) but also as a
source of risk identification specific to the company:
If the client isn’t cooperating, it is very difficult to know which risks are
most important.
This quote illustrates that the seniors not only start with discomforts, but also
depend on the client for creating new ones. One of the acts of relief of discomforts
is then, paradoxically, to get so close to the client that new discomforts appear.
Although the relationship between the senior and the client is paramount for
making the assignment a success (in terms of relief of discomforts), the clients
have different qualities. Specifically, the interaction with the CFO is vital and
one of the seniors concluded that one question needed to be answered in the
initial relationship with the CFO:
Is the CFO trustworthy?
Consequently, the seniors start with a discomfort and they need to answer this
question to be able to start the audit. The seniors cannot circumvent this issue and
they must act accordingly. We found that the seniors have been trained in finding
indications that may turn the discomfort into comfort. In one interview, a senior
described what they looked for:
They told us that you could be comfortable with a CFO that has a tidy desk.
If the desk is a mess, the accounts are a mess.
Another senior recounted that he specifically looked at the type of car that the
CFO drove and that it would be discomforting if the CFO had an expensive car
and if the firm at the same time was doing poorly. The acts directed to getting
relief of discomforts are not only concerned with including the CFO in the
process, it is also about making judgments about the CFO’s character and inten-
tions. Albeit that the relief of discomforts relies on getting close to the CFO, some
seniors report that there must be some distance. One senior remembers an
awkward situation:
The CFO had an extra desk put into his office so I could work close to him.
However, it became too close and after a couple of days when I felt I had to
go out of the room to call the office, I asked to be moved to another location.
The senior must act to balance on the thin line between being both inside and
outside the client’s reality. On the one hand, this balancing act drives the senior to
find a situation where s/he is at an arm’s distance from the client. On the other
hand, it is important to act so the senior is right where the numbers start
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making sense; or as one senior put it ‘right where it happens’. One senior reported
on an occasion where moving from one place to another helped:
Once I had to sit in the client’s coffee room. At first I was upset, but I later
found out that it was a very good place for obtaining unofficial information.
The audit senior found that to get comfortable with the numbers, it was ben-
eficial to sit where the information flowed more freely. Becoming comfortable
is about getting into the client’s world and still being on the outside. As this
example shows, to get relief from discomforts the seniors can make efforts to
pass the gatekeepers in the organization so that it is possible to be close to organ-
izational gossip.
Relief of discomforts is also about handling the audit firm methodology as
expressed through audit software and work programs. Elsewhere it has been
suggested that the audit program is a key influence on perceived budget attain-
ability (Otley and Pierce, 1996b) and that structured audit programs improve
audit efficiency and consistency (Cushing and Loebbecke, 1986; Ashton and
Willingham, 1988; McDaniel, 1990). Our investigation shows the same patterns,
the methodology is a highly appraised means to get relief from discomforts. The
seniors even related to the methodology as being the most important path to
follow in their efforts to become comfortable:
You know, auditing is not so difficult. You just follow the instructions and
add and subtract #smiling#.
In an ANT sense, the manual is an actor that must be attended to. That is, the
procedures disclosed in the manual are obligatory points of passage if the senior
wants to relieve themselves from discomforts. The seniors recognize this by con-
cluding that:
If you are unmotivated, you just follow the work program and question
nothing.
Following the manual is the safest way to achieve relief from discomforts.
First, since the manual relies heavily on the structural knowledge (embedded
in the manual), it relieves the senior from expanding their responsibilities of judg-
ments. Second, following the manual also provides another aspect of relief from
discomforts, namely, the risk of getting blamed:
If my work is reviewed and I have closed all open ‘points’, I suppose my job
is ok. What else is there to worry about?
Discomforts, it seems, is not merely an issue of the numbers; it is also about the
expectations the seniors are experiencing. Some seniors stated that these two
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different sets of discomforts were parallel, that is, that relief from one achieved
relief from the other. Still, others were not convinced of that relationship and
were more inclined to see the acts directed at relieving discomforts were
sequential:
The methodology is only a way to internally defend the work that is done. In
the end, what it is all about is becoming comfortable with the numbers. You
can’t structure an audit process.
Getting comfortable, then, means working ‘with and through structure’. On the
one hand, the senior needs to beware of compliance-based audit (fulfilling all
requirements). On the other hand, s/he has also to handle the discomforts
outside of the manual (the gut feeling as Kosmala’s [2006] respondent calls it).
The seniors in our study emphasized the shortcomings of the manual:
A good auditor has a feeling that goes beyond the standardized review.
As professionals, the seniors do not want to picture themselves as parts of an
audit machine. Such a view would be discomforting and both experiences as well
as integrity were issues commonly discussed. Although never explicitly stated, it
seems like the acts of achieving relief from discomforts varies between the
seniors. Even though complying with the work program is the major means to
get comfortable, the personality, and the experience and, not least, the integrity
of the senior seems to affect what actions are taken. One senior told about remain-
ing uncomfortable even though the signing auditor had closed the books:
I’ve got my pride! I have taken this issue to the concurring partner. I mean,
not that it matters to me . . . but it’s a matter of integrity. I suppose others
might have let go of it by now.
From one point of view, auditing consists of acts providing complicated func-
tional rituals (Pentland, 1993) in response to uncertainty. From another, the
rituals are not all the same, and the efforts to produce micro-comfort differ
depending on what actors are involved in the audit process. For some of the
seniors, the CFO was a major source of discomfort; for others a non-expendable
ally; for most, s/he was a bit of both. The seniors’ views on the work program
were similar. On the one hand, the work program was a discomfort not least
because it was an important actor that had to be attended. On the other hand,
the work program was a formidable ally, especially as it frames (Callon, 1998,
1999) the universe of discomforts that the audit firm has identified. The senior,
consequently, needs to pay extra attention to the work program as well as to
the client.
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Comfort as a State
There is always more auditing to be done; that is, relieving oneself from all dis-
comforts is hardly possible. At some point of time however, the audit is con-
sidered finished and it has been decided that by taking into account all possible
discomforts enough work has been invested. Still, where is that point? And do
the points when the comforts saturate differ between actors? The sense of
comfort as a state directs the attention to finding which actors define the audit
as ready, that is, when the state of comfort is at a level where the appropriate
level of discomforts has been attended to. Audit theory states that the amount
of work put into an audit should correspond to the risk level of the audited
company (cf. the audit risk model in, e.g. Messier, 2003). Still, many authors
(cf. McNair, 1991; Power, 1999, 2003) suggest that the likelihood that the
costs of an audit will not match and remedy this risk lurks in the competitive
environment of auditing. When approached with this possibility, our respondents
did not accept this as an accurate description of their everyday work:
As I see it, we always do good audits. We don’t sign if we are not
comfortable.
Certainly, the seniors did agree that some audits needed more attention and
resources than others did. According to the normative literature, what primarily
determines the amount of work is the condition of the client’s accounts, the riski-
ness of their business and the state of their internal controls (cf. Carmichael et al.,
1996; Messier, 2003). Overall, the seniors accepted the ideas that configured the
audit assignment. Nevertheless, when prompting our informants on which dis-
comforts that were crucial to turn into a state of comforts, the spotlight turned
on the signing auditors’ view on comfort:
What you focus on depends on whom you work for. They [the partners] are
all different. Some partners are obsessed with revenue recognition and
others with . . . for instance . . . mapping routines. It was quite frustrating
in the beginning but you learn rather quickly what each expects of you.
What may be a comfortable state for one signing partner may not be for
another. The seniors described some of the signers as being more squeamish
than others are. Yet, again, some signing auditors had a ‘favorite’ account that
always had to be audited extra carefully. These observations imply that there is
no one single point of getting comfortable and that actors higher up in the organ-
ization have an important say in defining the state of comfort. Similar findings
have been presented in studies regarding premature sign-offs (cf. Lee, 2002,
p. 327 and Sweeney and Pierce, 2004, p. 796). Even though the seniors recognize
that the preferences of the signing auditors affect the state of comfort, this was not
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perceived as a problem because the professional respect for the signing partners
was so strong:
It is impressive how the signing auditors can pinpoint the problems of the
accounts. They look at the annual statement and immediately find the
important issues.
The experienced eye of the signing auditor was highly valued by the seniors
and the signing auditor was the person who, habitually mediated through the
audit manager, often defined the state of comfort and that all seniors have to
pass to get confirmation on whether the discomforts are sufficiently eliminated.
The seniors are well aware of the hierarchical situation at the audit firm and
that it is the signing auditor that takes the final decision. Most seniors stated
that the signing auditors ‘had the last call anyway’, and, therefore, it makes no
sense to contest a decision. Still, even if the signing auditor is the most important
actor in defining when the state of comfort is reached, not all seniors share their
view of comfort:
Well, I would not have signed that report. Still, the experience of the
signing auditor was probably so large that it was possible to make that
judgment.
In our investigation it became obvious that the signing auditor’s view did not
suffice and that several actors were involved in defining when the audit was fin-
ished, that is, when enough discomforts had been removed. Although most of the
seniors accepted ‘the experienced eye’ and ‘the signature as an allocation of
responsibility’ some seniors explicitly showed their discomforts:
We have this situation on an assignment where we need to adjust the profit,
which is too low. The partner is of the old school, however; you know the
kind that only can adjust profit downwards. ‘True and fair view’ doesn’t
exist in his world – only prudence.
In this case, although the signing auditor is comfortable with the numbers, the
senior did not accept his/her definition of a comfortable state. Rather, in this case,
it was theoretical arguments (i.e. emanating from auditing and accounting theory)
that were presented as important actors and the signing auditor’s view was con-
tested. The decision of when enough discomforts have been eliminated is an
activity involved in constant negotiations about what is right or wrong or
about what is good or bad (Power, 1999; Beattie et al., 2001; Eklov, 2001).
According to the seniors, the state of comfort that is characterized by the end
of the audit is a situation highly dependent on other actors.
Another important actor affecting the seniors’ (and signing auditors’) view on
when the state of comfort was achieved was the budget (for the importance of
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budgets see Kelley and Margheim, 1990; Otley and Pierce, 1996b; Lee, 2002;
Pierce and Sweeney, 2004; Sweeney and Pierce, 2004).5 The budget represents
the concrete frame that sets a limitation on what amount of work is acceptable
and what amount is not. Still, the seniors did not perceive the spending of the
budget as an indicator of comfort; the budget was not seen as a sacred limitation
to the audit (Sweeney and Pierce, 2004):
Well, you have your budget and if the assistant has used, for example, more
than the budgeted time for accounts receivables, then I call him back: still,
checking for materiality is paramount – budget or no budget.
This quote illustrates that it is not true that when the budget is spent, the audit is
over. Rather, a tighter budget requires the team to concentrate on the specific risk
areas of most importance (Lee, 2002). The budget is important as a plan for the
assignment, but does not seem to be a decisive actor in finding the state of
comfort. Time, however, is a recurring issue when discussing comfort (see also
DeZoort and Lord, 1997; Pierce and Sweeney, 2004). The seniors noted that
the perspectives on comfort are altered when the seniors are up against a cut-
off date. The closer to a deadline, the more discomforts are accepted as tolerable
and the level where comfort is reached is lowered. The differences between want-
to-know, need-to-know and must-know become clear when time as actor is intro-
duced into the audit process. This can be frustrating:
When you plan the audit in the beginning of the year, there are so many
things you consider necessary to know in order to be able to sign the [audi-
tor’s] report. With only weeks or days to deadline, you look at the situation
somewhat differently. Thus, the question is not what we think we need to
know or what we would like to know. No, then you ask yourself what you
must know.
The seniors are comfortable in relation to the time they have. That is, being
comfortable is contextual to the specific project and the seniors are partaking
in a continuous re-evaluation of what state has to be reached. Comfort as state
is hence not permanent or predetermined, rather, what discomforts that have to
be accepted change in relation to what actors are involved in the definition of
when an audit is finished.
Comfort as Renewal
The renewal of comfort relates to how new discomforts are added to old ones
(and how old ones are purged). Renewal is, according to the seniors in our
study, something that happens because of an increased knowledge of the
client. The seniors reported that in the first year of an assignment, everything
is new and that considerable time is allocated to understanding the business of
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the client, identifying risks and solving how to audit these risks. In the second
year, the seniors and the team make use of experiences and the perception of
discomforts changes:
You now know what you should have looked for last year.
Those discomforts that might have been accepted during the first year may
become unacceptable in the second year audit. This was not seen as something
controversial but rather as a natural progression:
A first-year assignment can only be so good. You do what you can but at the
same time, you have to acknowledge that you cannot learn everything at
once. In the second year, you are starting to gain a grip on the audit.
You now know what you should have looked for in the previous year. In
the third year, the audit is perfect. All risks are identified and you know
what to look for and how to do it.
When a senior focuses on a specific risk, it can be interpreted as needing less
relief regarding some areas of the audit and more relief regarding others. Experi-
ences gained on previous audits renew the state of comfort that the senior seeks to
attain. However, not only does s/he acquire information that was not previously
available, but last year’s audit may also have made it possible to deepen the audit.
In some cases, the renewal of the state of comfort seems to be built into the
assignment. One audit senior tells about the possibility to go on to the ‘next
level’.
The first year was a disaster. The client could not report the accrued
vacation pay for the personnel. The efforts from us [the audit team and
the client] were totally focused on fixing this during our first year as audi-
tors. The next year, however, we could perform an audit that was more
normal.
Getting to know the client, their accounts and their business is, according to the
seniors, factors affecting the renewal of comfort. Still, renewal does not only
concern learning about the client, it also depends on the client’s situation. The
acceptable level of discomforts may be altered because of the financial perform-
ance of the client. One senior concludes that:
The auditing efforts are much tougher when a client is loosing money; when
business is fine, we don’t have to worry so much.
A re-encounter with the world of nursing might shed some additional light on
this matter. A person with severe abdominal pains will feel great discomfort and
consequently s/he is in a state of uncomfort. The relief of discomfort will be
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targeted at the abdominal pains. The fact that the patient has a hole in a tooth that
needs to be fixed is ignored. The tooth is not a discomfort to the patient. When the
abdominal pains are relieved and a state of comfort is attained, the hole in the
tooth will be a cause of great discomfort, ultimately throwing the patient back
into a state of uncomfort, though on a new and transcended level.
The most prominent actors for changing the level where comfort is achieved
come from outside the audit firm. Not least, new laws and regulations play a
role, but so does the litigious environment. Changes in accounting and reporting
standards are another less dramatic, but much more talked about, foundation of
renewal. Typically, the International Accounting Standards Board’s recommend-
ations change the levels in which the seniors become comfortable. In addition,
this actor is a common denominator for the audit senior and the CFO:
2005 is something we talk to our clients about.
Discomforts that are external to the client or to the team can be of a different
kind, however. The presence of an expectations gap (Humphrey et al., 1993;
Wolf et al., 1999) has resulted in serious implications for auditing practice. As
the seemingly constantly reoccurring corporate scandals appear in the news,
questions about the auditors’ part in these scandals are frequently discussed. It
has been argued that ‘the “expectations gap” is not so much a problem for audit-
ing as its constitutive principle’ (Power, 1999, p. 144). Still, the expectations gap
has possibly also worked as an accelerator for the declining trust in auditors.6 The
scandals change the way the ‘audit machine’ (Pentland, 1993) works. Some of the
seniors hailed this change:
All the scandals have pushed us towards a more substantive auditing. And I
feel more comfortable with that kind of auditing.
Materiality judgment is often very different with regards to what gets into the
news and what is accepted in the financial accounts. The media logic seldom
takes consideration of the auditor’s materiality threshold. One of the recurring
headlines in the media, which relate to these accounting issues, is remuneration
packages and fringe benefits for top managers. The identification of this kind of
exogenous discomforts can ignite a renewal of the audits. Power (2004, p. 32)
describes the trend to worrying about second order risks: ‘Reputation has
turned the concept of materiality upside down: financial immaterial events
may have a huge potential significance for the organisation.’ Hence, an ironic
consequence is that corporate scandals, via the media, can have an effect on a
senior’s state of comfort:
In a way you could say that what we look for is decided upon by what’s in
the news.
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Still, the increased attention from media and other actors does not change the
whole auditing process. In our interviews, the question of materiality was habitu-
ally discussed when it came to renewal of comfort. The expectations gap, usually
only an annoyance to the seniors, now becomes a grave cause for discomfort,
possibly even turning comfort that exists about already signed annual reports
into uncomfort. One senior noted:
After all the auditing scandals, we have to keep an extra eye on issues, such
as travel and expense accounts, even though the amounts are way below
materiality.
The actors that come into light when focusing on the renewal state of comfort
are actors at the margin of the accounting and auditing practices. The news media
has no place in the audit process and is not an actor that the seniors typically
experience as a discomfort that needs to be relieved. Yet, it becomes a discomfort
when the audit practice as such becomes questioned. As long as it is part of their
own development, the seniors did not seem to mind the renewal of comfort.
However, when media or accounting standard bodies introduced suggestions of
renewal, the seniors were more critical.
Renewal is paramount to the seniors because assignments that do not offer pos-
sibilities to find new discomforts are frustrating. One auditor described it in the
following way:
By the fourth year, you are starting to become comfortable. The audit is no
longer a challenge and instead becomes boring.
Overall, this analysis of renewal of comfort shows that the point where the
seniors get comfortable changes over time (and with experience of the client),
with the financial position of the client and according to the views of other
actors outside the audit practice.
Conclusion and Contributions
An investigation concerned with stories about discomfort is not primarily an
effort directed to finding irregularities. Rather, as Lee (2002) indicates, when irre-
gularities are framed as seniors failing to follow the audit plan the analysis fails to
take into account the variety of actors involved in the audit process. By including
comfort theory in studies of audit quality reduction behavior it is possible to
discuss beyond the obvious concerns of the manual and the signing auditor. By
prompting auditors for situations when they have signed off on an audit task
when they are not comfortable, a different ‘measure’ for the risk of audit failures
might be obtained. Comfort theory provides a language to sophisticate such a
discussion.
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The interpretation of the audit practice as a ritual producing comfort has been
beneficial for the understanding of auditing particularly in pointing out that the
audit practice has significance beyond its manifest purpose and that this signifi-
cance operates at an emotional level for the participants (Pentland, 1993).
Although we subscribe to the benefits of such a perception, we recognize that
the diffusion of comfort from individual to individual to the audit firms (and
further on to society), as described by Pentland (ibid.), might obscure the conflicts
and negotiations that always occur before a statement becomes a fact. Our ambi-
tion has been to shed a light on how we can understand the production of comfort
in an auditing practice beyond a ritualistic approach.
The empirical corpus in this paper comes from interviewing audit seniors that
are in the midst of their audit career. Our conclusion is that, from the seniors’
point of view, auditing is not a ritual and an auditor cannot merely do ‘auditing
things’. To produce comfort the seniors recognize that there is a universe of dis-
comforts to attend. Whether a state of comfort that is acceptable is reached
depends on primarily the signing auditor. That is, the emotional state that
Pentland (1993) portrays as ‘beyond cognition’ is highly dependent on
the signing auditor’s emotional state. The seniors accept this, not least due to
competence and accountability issues. Still, as this study of discomforts has
made visible, an analysis of the production of comfort needs to involve many
actors and the signing auditor does not decide this level alone.
In Pentland’s (1993, p. 619) view, audit rituals produce comfort and the ritual
is what is important. Our contribution to this view is that from the senior’s pers-
pective the comfort production is much more than signing the report. By introdu-
cing comfort theory, we have made an effort to qualify the understanding of what
is done, when whatever is done is enough and why this level changes. In the relief
sense of comfort the auditors act to, on the one hand, find discomforts, and on the
other, in turn eliminate these discomforts. In the state sense of comfort, we found
that the senior is dependent on the signing auditor to identify when a comfortable
state has been reached. Nevertheless, many actors are involved and an audit is not
finished until all relevant actors are convinced. The renewal sense of comfort
highlighted that the discomforts that were accepted last year might not be
accepted today; the state (and hence the acts of relief) changes over time. By
applying and developing comfort theory, we have contributed to Pentland’s
(1993) and Power’s (1999) work on auditing as a comfort-producing activity.
This study has been delimited to the study of audit seniors. It is reasonable to
suggest that the results would have been different if we had studied signing audi-
tors or partners of the auditing firm. Not least, two issues are strikingly absent.
First, the financial welfare of the audit firm was quite belittled by our respond-
ents. In (only) one occasion, a senior noted that the business of auditing is
business. The main impression, however, is that while making profit is a major
concern for any auditing firm it is not any major concern for the seniors. This
would most probably not have been the case had we studied, for example, part-
ners. Second, the issue of risk was also absent in our interviews. True, the seniors
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mentioned hindrances to identify risks but gave no information about which ones
and how these risks could be a problem (if at all). Again, it is reasonable that risk
issues would have been highlighted if we would have interviewed signing audi-
tors. Another caveat of this study is that we did not differ between the comments
and the type of assignment. It is possible that the different perspectives on relief,
state and renewal relate to what kind of client the seniors were working with. We
did not use this variable and this could be a possibility for future research.
This study has been concerned with how seniors perceive discomforts and
there is a vast literature focusing on non-partners. Although this paper set out
to contribute to the sociological strand of audit research, it may shed a light on
other fields of research. There is a vast set of studies of (what we have
labeled) seniors in quality reduction behavior research and on quality threats
(cf. Alderman and Deitrick, 1982; Margheim and Pany, 1986; Kelley and
Margheim, 1987; Waggoner and Cashall, 1991; Otley and Pierce, 1995, 1996a,
1996b; Willet and Page, 1996; Herrbach, 2001; Pierce and Sweeney, 2004;
Sweeney and Pierce, 2004). In relation to this literature, the hindrances men-
tioned by the seniors in this investigation (e.g. budget time pressure, the audit
manual, reviews and hierarchical supervision) relate to some of the variables
used in modeling the incidence of ‘irregular auditing’.
Still, the whole strand of literature on audit quality reduction behavior has been
questioned for not taking commercial concerns into proper consideration (Lee,
2002). The argument presented is that ‘irregular’ auditing, as it has previously
been defined, only occurs where audit rules and guidelines are unambiguous
and where budget restrictions are incidences for dysfunctional behavior and
not a part of the reality of auditing (Lee, 2002; see also Herrbach, 2005). In con-
trast, Lee (2002, p. 330) notices that:
When junior staff was confronted with the possibility of not being able to
complete the work to an acceptable level within the permitted time, they
would use their own time, or document their work and make senior staff
responsible for deciding whether the work was sufficient. Neither action
may be described as irregular auditing nor does it suggest that junior
staff is assimilating a casual regard for audit protocol.
Albeit ANT has not played a major role in this study, we have followed the
advice to feed off controversies (Latour, 2005). It is when an issue becomes con-
troversial that the trials and negotiations become visible (Latour, 2005) and facts
become contested and re-constructed. As a result, we have focused on the dis-
comforts that the seniors perceive and have foremost examined which actors
play a role in the production of comfort.
The expectation gap together with the corporate scandals has promoted a
renewal of the state of comfort. The actors on the capital market need to be com-
fortable with the firms’ accounting numbers in order to, in turn, produce comfor-
table calculations. Paradoxically, however, as the level of comfort is renewed the
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universe of discomforts needs to be expanded and new acts of relief need to be
added to the palette of audit efforts. Power’s (1996) sketching of an audit
society suggests that the auditing realm is ‘exploding’ and that auditing has
become a standard solution for issues in today’s society. He also presents
some worries about the trends and admits ‘. . . a little discomfort about this
growing industry of comfort production’ (Power, 1999, p. 147). We concur to
this worry and:
. . . it must not be forgotten that the comfort and relief so obtained are not
all. They are, in fact, nothing more than a sign that the vital powers have
been relieved by removing something that was oppressing them.
(Nightingale, 1860)
Our conclusion from this study is that the effort to produce comfort necessi-
tates an effort to find and relate to discomforts, just as any successful program
needs an anti-program. This loop, the search for discomforts, the application of
methods of turning the discomforts into a state of comfort and then again chan-
ging perspectives of discomforts and comforts, are acts of creativity. In fact, our
study indicates that rather than seeing auditing as a ritual it could be seen as an
imaginative act of configuring discomforts and comforts. From this perspective,
the capacity of auditing is not one of finalizing the accounting year, but rather of a
starting point for the next endeavor. The fact that there are (and that the auditors
construct) discomforts makes the auditing practice such a grand solution in this
society and clearly the interplay between discomforts and comforts nurture the
audit explosion. Is that comforting to know?
Acknowledgements
This study is part of the Reactor Research Program ‘The Role of Accounting on
the Capital Market’ funded by the Swedish Academy of Auditing, The Bank of
Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and Handelsbanken.
Notes
1The word uncomfort is used to distinguish non-comfort in the state sense from non-comfort in
the relief sense. Too many discomforts and a person is in a state of uncomfort. With sufficient
(but not necessarily complete) relief from these discomforts the person can attain a state of
comfort, that is, transcend from being uncomfortable to being comfortable.2Miller (1991) and Robson (1991, 1992) pioneered the inclusion of non-humans into the
accounting discourse (for other examples of papers that assume an ANT ontology within the
accounting discourse see Chua (1995), Catasus (2000), Lowe (2000, 2001), Briers and Chua
(2001), Mouritsen et al. (2001), Jeacle (2003), Gendron and Barret (2004) and McNamara
et al. (2004)).3This is a working definition that does not have to (but in most cases does) correspond to a Senior
at Deloitte, a Senior at Ernst & Young, a Senior Associate at PWC and an Assistant Manager at
KPMG.
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4In small and medium-sized companies, the seniors most often meet with the CFOs, whereas in
larger organizations the chief accountant represented the client. Here, however, we will refer to
them all as CFOs.5It has for instance been noted that greater time budget pressure can result in more underreport-
ing of time (Rhode, 1978; Kelley and Seiler, 1982; Lightner et al., 1982), that is, auditors spend
more time on a task than they report. One reason might be that auditors believe that adherence
to the time budget, even if underreporting is necessary to meet the budget, results in better per-
formance evaluations (Lightner et al., 1983). Underreporting of time can however affect the
quality of future audits, as there is evidence that suggests that previous year’s recorded time
is a major influence in the current year’s budget (Fleming, 1980; Kermis and Mahapatra,
1985). Time pressure can thus be negative for audit quality (The Treadway Commission,
1987). It has even been claimed that too much time pressure could lead to audit failure
(AICPA, 1978). It was hence alarming that Rhode (1978) found that 50% of the 1,526
AICPA members in the late 1970s admitted in a survey to sign off on audit steps not
covered and without noting the omission. Pressure to meet time budgets was the primary
reason noted. This finding has since then been repeated numerously (Alderman and Deitrick,
1982; Kelley and Seiler, 1982; Lightner et al., 1982, 1983; Kelley and Margheim, 1987; Raghu-
nathan, 1991). However, Fusaro et al. (1984, quoted in Otley and Pierce, 1996a, p. 79) suggest
that time pressure implies that ‘the seniors do feel stress in managing and completing their
assignments, but this factor is not critical to the majority. In the best of worlds, they would
be given more time and lighter workload. But they clearly have adapted to the reality of
day-to-day public accounting.’ In an attempt to nuance how time pressure affects auditor per-
formance Otley and Pierce (1996a) found that perceived attainability of time budgets had a sig-
nificant influence on ‘dysfunctional’ behavior, while the perceived amount of emphasis on
meeting budgets did not. Anyway, underreporting seems to be more common among lower
level auditors (i.e. seniors and staff auditors) (Kelley and Seiler, 1982).6See Power (1999) for an examination of the intricate relationship between (different layers of)
trust and auditing.
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