The influence of work overload, time pressure and social influence pressure on auditors' job performance

Abstract

Auditing is considered a stressful occupation as the job is always characterized by heavy workloads, many deadlines, time pressure, social pressure and commitment towards the organization. Public auditors are often under pressure to produce quality audit, and yet may be under serious work pressure or continually dealing with auditees in stressful situations. Work stress faced by public auditors also may lead to mental and physical distress which resulted to decrease in job performance. This study examines which potential factors of pressure that have a significant relationship to government auditors' job performance. Factors to be test in this study are work overload, time pressure and social influence pressure. This current study contributes information and ideas to the management and academician in the theoretical and practical aspects. The respondents in this study are 203 government auditors from government auditors in National Audit Department of Malaysia. The result of this study shows that there is no significant relationship on work overload to auditors' job performance. However the result of this study found that factor of time pressure shown a positive significant relation on auditors' job performance, while social influence pressure shown a negative significant relationship on auditors' job performance.