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This paper builds upon the work of researchers who have examined the effects of decline on an organization's exchange partners. Its purpose is to examine the relationship between auditors' perceptions of oganizational decline and audit firms' specification of clients' audit risk. Based on relevant organizational decline and accounting literatures, we propose that perceptions of greater decline are associated with higher firm assigned audit risk. We also propose that larger, public and longer-term audit clients would make this connection stronger. The results reveal that the relationship of perceived decline to audit risk is quadratic (curved) rather than linear as anticipated. Assigned audit risk is high for smaller, privately held firms perceived to be rapidly declining or rapidly growing. Audit risk is even higher for larger, public client firms perceived to be in rapid decline. However, audit risk is relatively low for larger, public firms perceived to be rapidly growing. The time a firm is an audit client is not important. An implication of these findings is that research on the reactions of an organization's exchange partners to decline should be extended to include their reactions to rapid growth for certain types of organizations.

Two previous studies have produced conflicting accounts about the effects of resource availability on the use of authority and power in university personnel budgeting. However, the conflict may result from differences in the procedures employed in the studies. To control for these differences, the analysis in the first study is duplicated as much as possible on the data of the second study. The results of the replicated analysis show the importance of power during scarcity, and they support the first study's findings. However, when another statistical procedure is used on the data of the replication or when a different model of authority is specified, authority dominates. Some possible reasons to account for the dominance of authority are sketched. The reported findings suggest that interpretations about authority and power depend upon the measures of authority specified in the regression equations and the statistical procedures employed in the analysis.RésuméDeux études précédentes ont produit des résultats contradictoires quant à l'effet produit par la dtsponibilité des ressources sur l'usage d'autorité et de pouvoir dans le budget alloué au personnel universitaire. Afin de contrǒler ces différences, l'analyse de la première étude est répétée le plus possible selon les données de la seconde étude. Les résultats de l'analyse répliquée demontrent l'impor‐tance du pouvoir en période de rareté et confirme les résultats de la premiére étude. Cependant, lorsqu'un autre procédé statistique est utilisé sur les données de la réplique, ou lorsqu'un modèle d'autorité différent est spécifie, l'autorité domine. Les raisons possibles expliquant la dominance de l'autorité sont exposées brièvement. Les résultats indiquent que les interprétations relatives à l'autorité et au pouvoir dépendent des mesures d'autorite spécifiées dans les équations de régression et les precédés statistiques employés dans l'analyse.