Technology is changing all aspects of business life and forcing adaptation in business processes and product utilization. Disruptive technologies usually bring in cheaper and simpler products with features valued by new customers and often cause radical industry changes, such as minicomputers taking over the market dominated by mainframes, and subsequently being replaced by personal computers (Christensen 2013). Prior literature has documented how social media changes customer relationship management (Heller Baird and Parasnis 2011) and how artificial intelligence affects earnings news dissemination (Blankespoor, deHaan, and Zhu 2017). Given these disruptive information technologies, business measurement (accounting) and assurance (audit) will inevitably change and be progressively automated in order to continue to be of great importance to the enterprises and stakeholders.
Financial statements have a long history. Once third parties get involved in the production of economic items—from agriculture to manufacturing and the arts, the need for...
