High turnover among auditor assistants is a problem in the auditor profession. 61,7 % of young graduates economists have changed profession at least once during their first three years as employees (Hiltebeitel & Leauby, 2001), heavy workload in the auditing profession is considered to be a contributing factor (Axelsson, 2015). The main purpose of the study is to explain how students' views on the workload affects staff turnover among auditor assistants. In addition, the aim is to describe the expectations of a corresponding expectation gap between students and auditor assistants. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, behavioural theories such as Theory of Planned Behavior and Social Cognitive Theory have been adopted. Further, the Expectation Theory, Identity Theory, Theory of Professions and previous studies of the expectation gap and workload, stress and time pressure are used. The study is based on a combination method based on three interviews with auditor assistants, to develop an understanding of auditor assistants experience of the workload. Subsequently a questionnaire was sent to students with a total of 134 received answers. A short questionnaire with three questions similar to those sent out to students has also been sent to the auditor assistants, with a total of 43 received answers. The results shows that there is an expectation gap considering workload between students and auditor assistants. Further aspects have emerged as contributing factors to high staff turnover in the auditor profession, such as expectations for salary and work content.

Emotions are an important underlying factor that may interact with pressure and other situational variables to influence auditors’ judgments and decisions. This study seeks to identify emotional intelligence (EI) as a key factor in dealing with emotions and pressures in an audit context. In this paper, I focus on how EI may influence the relation between job pressures (i.e., time budget pressure and client incentive pressure) on the auditor’s judgment. Specifically, I investigate the moderating effect of emotional intelligence on auditor judgments when auditors experience both internal and external pressures. The results suggest that the moderating influence of EI on auditor judgments can effectively reduce auditors’ tendency to engage in dysfunctional behavior in order to improve audit quality. Furthermore, there is a positive relation between EI and professional skepticism suggesting that auditors with high EI are more skeptical and assess higher risk than auditors with low EI. Finally, moderation analysis suggests that EI is a significant mechanism which drives the joint effects of different type of pressures on auditor judgments.

Title: Activities of certified auditors Key words: auditor, liability, International Standards on Auditing ABSTRACT The diploma thesis focuses on the legal aspects of activities of certified auditors, particularly in the context of auditors' liability. First, it briefly summarizes the history of auditing throughout the world and in the Czech Republic. It analyses the meaning and objectives of the statutory audit and explains the triangular relationship between the auditor, management of the entity and its owners. The description of a typical course of assurance engagement is accompanied by cautionary advice for intricate aspects of acceptance of an audit engagement and the preparation of engagement letter. Attention is paid to materiality levels used during the statutory audit and to the expression that the financial statements give a true and fair view of the financial position of the entity. Different types of auditor's report are distinguished and a variety of errors frequently made not only by users of financial statements from the common public but also by experts participating in management of audited entities is mentioned as well. The three chapters dealing with auditor's liability discuss the civil, disciplinary and criminal issues related to assurance activities. As regards auditors' civil...

<p><p>Uppsatsens syfte är att ta reda på enskilda revisorers uppfattning om penningtvättslagens eventuella påverkan på revisorns arbete och kundrelation. Dessutom undersöker uppsatsen enskilda revisorers syn på om de anser att de har förutsättningarna som krävs för att följa penningtvättslagen. Studien har genomförts med en kvalitativ undersökningsmetod. Fem revisorer med lång erfarenhet inom revisionsbranschen har blivit intervjuade och därmed bistått med sina åsikter.</p><p><p>Enligt lag (2009:62) om åtgärder mot penningtvätt och finansiering av terrorism är revisorer skyldiga att granska och anmäla transaktioner som kan misstänkas vara penningtvätt eller finansiering av terrorism. Revisorerna är även skyldiga att ha god kundkännedom, vilket bland annat innebär att de skall göra noggranna identitetskontroller. Från en del håll har det dock framkommit åsikter om att det inte är problemfritt att involvera revisorer i lagstiftningen mot penningtvätt.</p><p>Den genomförda undersökningen visar att majoriteten av de intervjuade revisorerna inte ser några direkta problem med att vara involverade i penningtvättslagen. Åsikterna är dock delade och några är kritiska till lagstiftningen. Slutsatserna av studien är att majoriteten av respondenterna inte ser att lagen påverkar relationen till klienten. De anser vidare att lagen innebär mer arbete, men detta ser revisorerna inte som särskilt påfrestande. Revisorerna som har deltagit i studien anser själva att de har goda förutsättningar att följa lagen.</p></p></p> / <p><p>The purpose with this thesis is to study the opinions that individual auditors have about the law against money laundering. The study will examine the opinions from auditors about how the law affects their work and their relations to the clients. Individual auditors view of the conditions to follow the law against money laundering, will also be studied in this thesis. The study was conducted with a qualitative research method. Five auditors with long experience from the accounting profession have been interviewed and had thereby assisted the thesis with their views.</p><p><p>According to the law (2009:62) against money laundering and terrorist financing, auditors are obligated to examine and report transactions that could be suspected money laundering or terrorist financing. Auditors are also responsible to have a good knowledge about their clients, which for instance means that they must do accurate identity checks of the clients. However some people have pointed out that it’s not without any problems to involve auditors in the law against money laundering.</p><p>The study shows that a majority of the interviewed auditors don’t see any problems with being involved in the regulation against money laundering. However the opinions are divided and some of the auditors are critical to the regulation. The conclusion from the study is that most of the interviewed auditors don’t think that the relation to the client is affected by the law against money laundering. Further on they think that the law means more work, but the auditors don’t see this as particularly problematical. The auditors that have participated in the study believe that they have good terms to follow the law against money laundering.</p></p></p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-90).

Uppsatsens syfte är att ta reda på enskilda revisorers uppfattning om penningtvättslagens eventuella påverkan på revisorns arbete och kundrelation. Dessutom undersöker uppsatsen enskilda revisorers syn på om de anser att de har förutsättningarna som krävs för att följa penningtvättslagen. Studien har genomförts med en kvalitativ undersökningsmetod. Fem revisorer med lång erfarenhet inom revisionsbranschen har blivit intervjuade och därmed bistått med sina åsikter. Enligt lag (2009:62) om åtgärder mot penningtvätt och finansiering av terrorism är revisorer skyldiga att granska och anmäla transaktioner som kan misstänkas vara penningtvätt eller finansiering av terrorism. Revisorerna är även skyldiga att ha god kundkännedom, vilket bland annat innebär att de skall göra noggranna identitetskontroller. Från en del håll har det dock framkommit åsikter om att det inte är problemfritt att involvera revisorer i lagstiftningen mot penningtvätt. Den genomförda undersökningen visar att majoriteten av de intervjuade revisorerna inte ser några direkta problem med att vara involverade i penningtvättslagen. Åsikterna är dock delade och några är kritiska till lagstiftningen. Slutsatserna av studien är att majoriteten av respondenterna inte ser att lagen påverkar relationen till klienten. De anser vidare att lagen innebär mer arbete, men detta ser revisorerna inte som särskilt påfrestande. Revisorerna som har deltagit i studien anser själva att de har goda förutsättningar att följa lagen. / The purpose with this thesis is to study the opinions that individual auditors have about the law against money laundering. The study will examine the opinions from auditors about how the law affects their work and their relations to the clients. Individual auditors view of the conditions to follow the law against money laundering, will also be studied in this thesis. The study was conducted with a qualitative research method. Five auditors with long experience from the accounting profession have been interviewed and had thereby assisted the thesis with their views. According to the law (2009:62) against money laundering and terrorist financing, auditors are obligated to examine and report transactions that could be suspected money laundering or terrorist financing. Auditors are also responsible to have a good knowledge about their clients, which for instance means that they must do accurate identity checks of the clients. However some people have pointed out that it’s not without any problems to involve auditors in the law against money laundering. The study shows that a majority of the interviewed auditors don’t see any problems with being involved in the regulation against money laundering. However the opinions are divided and some of the auditors are critical to the regulation. The conclusion from the study is that most of the interviewed auditors don’t think that the relation to the client is affected by the law against money laundering. Further on they think that the law means more work, but the auditors don’t see this as particularly problematical. The auditors that have participated in the study believe that they have good terms to follow the law against money laundering.

This study explores how auditors’ attitudes toward marketing and their views on the importance of marketing affect how they balance their time spent on marketing and auditing activities. The purpose is to understand how changes in the business environment for auditors affect the relationship between the auditing profession and marketing. The study is based on a survey of 711 auditors in Sweden. The findings suggest that auditors with a positive attitude toward marketing spend significantly more time on marketing activities compared to those with a less positive attitude. Furthermore, auditors who view marketing activities as important spend significantly more time on marketing activities. The study controlled for the number of years as approved or authorized auditor, age of the auditor, and firm affiliation. The results indicate that the theoretical distance between the auditing profession and marketing does not exist in practice to the same degree as it used to. The findings of the study have implications for international auditing theory and practice in illuminating the relationship of marketing and auditing in a wider business context.

No description available.

This dissertation examines how differences between the strategic-systems audit approach and the traditional, transaction-based audit approach affect the content and complexity of client business knowledge in long-term memory, how these mental representations develop with experience, and how the representations affect risk assessment. Knowledge of the client?s business is essential to conducting an effective and efficient audit, but researchers have devoted little attention to how this knowledge is represented in memory and what effect it has on audit judgment. Moreover, proponents of the strategic-systems approach argue that this approach leads to the formation of a more-complex client business model and results in better audit judgments than the transaction-based approach. The study?s results contradict these claims, with the strategic-systems auditors having less-complex models than their TBA counterparts. Also, no experience-related differences were found in the client models, and risk assessments were only weakly affected by content and complexity differences between client models. After a variety of supplemental analyses, it was concluded that there is no evidence from this dissertation to suggest that the SSA methodology does not result in an auditor possessing an enhanced knowledge of the client?s business compared to that possessed by an auditor employing a traditional audit approach.

Background In 2008 a global financial crisis erupted. Even though auditors were not to blame for the financial crisis the public questioned how auditors could issue a clean bill of health despite the serious weaknesses. This made the Commission release the 2010 Green Paper on audit policy: Lessons from the Crisis. The Green Paper is a consultation paper which received around 700 replies from various stakeholders. In 2011, the Commission presented their proposal on reform of the audit market, in which many of the key elements had been discussed in the Green Paper. The 2011 proposal seeks to enhance auditor independence and introduce a more dynamic audit market. The proposed reforms are very strict and if the proposal is passed in its current form it would imply a major change of the audit market. This thesis has studied the replies made by investors to the Green Paper; investors are the primary stakeholders and those who should be most concerned with auditor independence. It is therefore important and interesting to study their viewpoints to the Green Paper. Purpose The purpose of this study is to understand and explain investors’ standpoints on the proposals mentioned in the Green Paper to enhance auditor independence, and to examine whether the European Commission, as indicted by the 2011 proposal, require more independence than investors as indicted by the replies made to the Green Paper. Method This study has taken a qualitative approach where the data has been analyzed in-depth. The Green Paper consists of 38 questions; four of these have been studied as they strongly relate to auditor independence. Furthermore this thesis has studied the replies made by investors; investors are the primary stakeholders and those who should be most concerned with auditor independence. It is therefore important and interesting to study their viewpoints to the Green Paper. Conclusion The majority of the respondents’ are negative to the ideas presented in the Green Paper but that does not imply that the Commission requires more independence than investors. Both the Commission and investors argue that status quo is not an option and that auditor independence must be strengthened. What separates their views is how to strengthen auditor independence. The Commission seeks to impose strict regulations while investors prefer good corporate governance as an alternative approach to strengthen auditor independence.