Managing the offshoring of audit work: Spanning the boundaries between onshore and offshore auditors

The offshoring of external audit work to so-called low-cost countries is prevalent among the Big 4 professional services firms. Despite this, our understanding of how this form of offshoring influences audit practitioners and the audit process is limited. This study examines how and why offshoring emerged as an organizational matter that changed the way audit work is organized in a Big 4 firm context. Our findings demonstrate how changes in the design of offshoring processes influence interactions between onshore and offshore auditors. We uncover how individual “boundary spanners” struggle to coordinate audit work across the multiple boundaries that separate onshore and offshore auditors. Furthermore, we show how the institutionalization of “boundary spanning” functions in organizational structures and processes can have the unintended consequence of widening the boundaries between onshore and offshore auditors. Finally, we offer evidence of the effect of offshoring on the learning process of onshore and offshore auditors.