Technology and group decision process in going-concern judgements

Accounting and auditing practices are continually being affected by advance s in technology. This study empirically examined the effect of group decisi on processes and technological advances on group going-concern decision mak ing. Groups with access to group decision support systems (GDSS) were compa red to groups without access to GDSS for their going-concern judgments. The results show group discussion induced auditors to be more conservative and to consider factors which may have overlooked at the individual level, tho ugh neither structure significantly reduced the considerable variance in th e individual going-concern judgments. Further, as compared to their counter parts in the face-to-face discussion groups, GDSS groups indicated much hig her confidence in their group's final assessment of the client's going-conc ern status and a higher level of satisfaction and agreement with the group decision processes. The findings suggest that while group discussions did n ot significantly reduce auditors' considerable variance in going-concern ju dgments, future research should investigate which explicit models would imp rove the consensus on going-concern evaluations.