In the audit profession, it is important to retain qualified and competent personnel to maintain a high audit quality. However, turnover is high within the profession, and more than half of newly graduated audit assistants leave the profession within three years. Previous studies in the field have focused on the audit assistant's perceptions of why they chose to leave the profession. What has not been studied to the same extent is the employer's view of the matter. Hence, the purpose of the study is to investigate how audit firms experience the causes for a high turnover among audit assistants. To fulfill the purpose, a theoretical model has been created that shows the organizational factors that should affect turnover among audit assistants through a combination of theories linked to career, leadership, and motivation. The theoretical model has been compared using a qualitative research method by using semi-structured interviews. Ten respondents from both Big-4 and smaller audit firms who were familiar with the firms' turnover among audit assistants were interviewed for this study. The results of the study show that audit firms experience that the organizational factors career, leadership and motivation have an impact on turnover among audit assistants. However, the audit firms experience that the work-related factors, workload, and stress, play a greater role than the organizational factors and are the main reasons for turnover among audit assistants. By examining the employer's perspective, the study describes how audit firms in Sweden experience the reasons for high turnover among audit assistants. The study contributes with a practical contribution on how audit firms can possibly reduce the number of audit assistants who leave the profession.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-90549 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Berg, Anton, Rahmani, Aria |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Handelshögskolan (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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