Understanding the impact of regulatory quality inspections on audit practice
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2021-08-24
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en
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Over the last decades, corporate scandals breached the public trust in auditors and their audit opinions. In order to restore the public trust, give insights into the audit process, and improve audit quality, several regulators were put in place to monitor the audit profession. In the Netherlands, the Authority Financial Markets (AFM) gained the authority to supervise the audit firms by performing regulatory quality inspections (RQI) on both the audit files and the quality control systems of the audit firms. These inspections were supposed to improve audit quality and regain the public trust. However, previous research finds contradictory evidence on whether RQI improves audit quality and what its actual effects are on audit practice. Therefore, this qualitative study aims to provide more insights into the effects of RQI on audit practice by adopting an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective, which allows a researcher to keep an open mind and to really understand what happens in practice. Furthermore, an ANT perspective allows to follow the interactions between RQI, the prime actor, and the other actors part of the actor-network, both human and non-human. RQI has both intended and unintended effects on audit practice.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen