Anecdotal evidence suggests that the escalated workload of the public accounting “busy season” is a major contributor to employee “burnout.” Academic research on the psychological impact of the busy season workload, however, is virtually absent from the accounting literature. We partially address this void by employing a longitudinal design and structural equation modeling to examine the causal impact of the busy season workload on public accountants' job burnout—a dysfunctional stress syndrome. Prior to the start of the busy season and again at its end, we measured hours worked, role stressors, and job burnout for a sample of public accountants from a national firm. The results of our analyses indicate that public accountants' pre-busy season burnout was not directly affected by hours worked, even though subjects reported an average workload of 49 hours per week. This result implies that public accountants may develop a relatively high workload threshold before it directly impacts their job burnout. During the busy season, our subjects' weekly workload increased to approximately 63 hours. The additional workload burden introduced by the busy season caused job burnout for our sample of public accountants to rise to levels rarely reported in the research literature.

CdSe nanocrystals in solution and films can enter a metastable state in which the highly luminescent nanocrystals become dark. This change, which we attribute to a surface transformation, can be caused by heating or by changing the environment of the nanocrystals at room temperature. The metastable transformation is reversed upon illumination of above-band-gap light, at which point the nanocrystals are again highly luminescent.

This paper makes two novel contributions to ranking accounting research programs constructed from publication counts in top journals (AOS, Auditing, BRIA, CAR, JAE, JAR, JATA, JIS, JMAR, RAST, and TAR). In contrast to previous studies, we recognize the mobility of intellectual assets tied to the human capital of accounting researchers, and therefore base our rankings on the researchers’ current affiliations rather than their affiliations at the time of publication. Also, we categorize each article written by topical area (auditing, financial, managerial, accounting information systems, tax, and other) and by methodology (analytical, archival, experimental, and other) and provide separate accounting program rankings by topical area and by methodology. These two innovations provide a rich, centralized information resource for decision-makers—both institutional and individual—in choosing how to allocate time, resources, and expertise.

Prior academic and practitioner literature argues that the ethical tone at the top of an organization is a key factor in establishing an effective internal control environment. Drawing on self-concept maintenance theory and in-group bias theory, this study predicts that entry-level staff auditors will disregard a company's ethical standards unless they observe a strong ethical tone from both their partner (tone at the top) and their supervising senior (tone at the bottom). Also, this study predicts that staff auditors will be more influenced by the tone of their supervising senior than the partner when these two individuals provide conflicting tones. In a 2 × 2 experiment that manipulates the tone set by a staff auditor's supervising senior and engagement partner, this study provides evidence consistent with predictions. Further analyses suggest that participants make less ethical decisions because they are less likely to view the situation as an ethical dilemma when either the senior or partner exhibits low tone. The results of this study emphasize that tone at the top is not, by itself, sufficient to produce ethical decision making; organizations must strive to foster a strong ethical tone throughout the entire organization, especially at lower levels of the organization.

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