While prior accounting research documents normalizing strategies within the accounting profession and in instances of accounting adoption, the potential of accounting itself as a strategic tool toward normalizing that which is considered socially abnormal (i.e., dirty) remains an important and unexamined area of inquiry. In this study, we conduct in-depth interviews to examine the role accounting plays in the development of the US cannabis industry (CI) as it transitions from the illicit market in which formal accounting was systematically avoided to a state-legal market in which participants are subject to conventional business processes. Facing impediments to traditional operating practices and pressures to increase normative conformity for industry survival, cannabis operators (COs) incorporated the use of accounting in three normalizing strategies (creative concession, collaborative facilitation, and experimentation), seemingly influenced by the incongruencies between prior illicit-market culture and experiences and the state-legal operating environment. In response to what operators perceived to be coercive regulation, they employed creative concession strategies, including influencing, bargaining, challenging, escaping, and cessation tactics. However, in response to pressures to adopt more commonly accepted forms of accounting, COs instead deployed two different strategies, one focused on acquiescence to normalizing pressures when doing so facilitated essential relationship building (i.e., collaborative facilitation strategies), and one deployed as strategic experimentation, working to normalize industry activities in areas of perceived threats to industry acceptance and continuity. Given CO accounting naiveté, its usefulness was often introduced by peripheral industry parties attempting to normalize their own participation with the CI. Notably, we also find that normalizing pressures occasionally resulted in unintended consequences, including reversion to the illicit market * Accepted by Yves Gendron. We thank Yves Gendron and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We are also grateful for the invaluable comments from

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The use of tax preparation software to meet federal tax-reporting requirements has dramatically increased in the last decade. The general assumption is that such software improves the accuracy of taxpayers' returns, in part because embedded intelligent agents identify potential form errors, provide interpretations of tax laws, and highlight potential IRS audit flags. However, it is possible that these intelligent agents may have other, unintended effects as well. In particular, it is likely that the audit warnings embedded in many of these products may cause many taxpayers to take more conservative positions in their tax returns. Taxpayers most likely to be affected in this way are those who are relatively less knowledgeable about tax laws and reporting requirements. This study presents the results of a computerized tax experiment that are consistent with the above expectations. For novice taxpayers, the audit flags embedded in the software led to conservative adjustments that are rather extreme, resulting in significantly higher reported taxable incomes relative to their counterparts who did not have access to the embedded audit flags. Knowledgeable taxpayers, in contrast, maintained essentially the same level of taxable income and corresponding tax liability despite software warnings of potential audit.

As the accounting profession enters new assurance markets, many decisions as to the best manner in which such services can be provided must be addressed. For instance, the traditional audit/attest-reporting model may not provide adequate information to justify the cost of assurance services in some situations. Alternatively, potential clients may turn to other assurance providers who are willing to provide better quality services and/or more informative assurance reporting. In this study, we examine the impact of a two-tier reporting model on the market demand for assurance services on software product reliability. One tier uses the traditional binary report common with audit/attest services where a standard report notes whether a software product achieves a minimum standard, while the other tier of reporting provides for a graded assessment of multiple levels of quality. The results indicate that when a graded report that differentiates high-quality vendors from moderateor low-quality vendors is available (1) high-quality vendors are willing to pay for the report, (2) buyers are willing to pay a premium for the reduced risk associated with a highquality opinion, and (3) high-quality vendors are able to drive other vendors with inferior products out of the market. When only a binary report is available, the market is more confused and chaotic. Vendors are not able to signal quality clearly; the high-quality vendor is not able to dominate the market; there is less vendor demand for the assurance report; buyers are unable to determine their desired product and make less total profit. These results have several implications for the accounting profession and researchers as they work on the design of new assurance service models.