| Summary: | In recent years there has been a growing use of expectancy theory to study motivation and performance in accounting environments. Such research efforts have resulted in reporting some inconsistent findings and low explanatory power for the expectancy model. In an attempt to increase the explanatory power of the model, several researchers have suggested the inclusion of nonexpectancy components in the model. This research was undertaken to develop an integrative expectancy model by incorporating some elements of goal setting theory and attribution theory into the expectancy formulation. The study was also designed to provide empirical evidence on the validity of a within-subject design of the proposed model through an empirical investigation of auditors* performance behaviors to meet budgeted time in public accounting firms. Alternative performance behaviors to meet budgeted time were modeled in three choice processes. The first deals with auditors choice to report unfiltered time (i.e. report actual time worked) as opposed to filtered time worked (i.e., underreporting and sign-off behaviors). The second process deals with auditors' choice to engage in underreporting as opposed to sign-off behaviors. The third process deals with auditors' choice to reduce or overrule some audit procedures based on professional judgment. Data were collected using an anonymous questionnaire from a sample of auditors at the staff, senior, and supervisory staff levels of fifty-three national, regional and local accounting firms in the Dallas- Fort Worth area. Data received from 671 participants were analyzed using th Automatic Interaction Detector (AID3) and multiple regression techniques. The findings of this research support the expectancy formulation and its relevancy to the accounting environments. However, five nonexpectancy variables were found to have significant relationships with auditors' choice processes to meet budgeted time. These five variables were supervision, budget feasibility, length of experience, organizational level and firm size classification.
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