The Impact of Audit Education on the Audit Expectation Gap
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Fotoh Lazarus Elad The Impact of Audit Education on the Audit Expectation Gap Evidence from Civilekonom Students in Sweden Business Administration Master’s Thesis 30 ECTS Term: Spring 2017 Supervisor: Dan Nordin Acknowledgements I would like to extend my profound gratitude to my supervisor, Ass. Prof. Dan Nordin for his immense guidance and commitment throughout this thesis writing process. Dan provided insightful and valuable feedback which had a positive effect on my critical thinking and analytical skills. I equally owe a debt of gratitude to Katharina Rahnert for her constructive comments and time spent in translating my questionnaire to Swedish. Furthermore, I am thankful to all the survey participants of this thesis. Without your willingness to participate in this study, this thesis will never have come to fruition. I am immensely indebted to my family for all the encouragement and moral support throughout this thesis writing phase, and throughout the entire Master’s program in Accounting and Control. Your positive energy enabled me to assail all obstacles. Above all, I am thankful to the Almighty God for the graces, strength, and perseverance bestowed on me throughout my studies. Karlstad, June 2017. Fotoh Lazarus Elad 3 Abstract There is considerable evidence of the existence of audit expectation gap between auditors and the public in Sweden. However, conflicting views exist regarding the role of audit education in narrowing this gap. This thesis, therefore, aims to investigate if the teaching of audit courses for civilekonom students contributes in narrowing the expectation gap resulting from the misunderstanding of audit regulations as contained in ISA and ABL. A survey questionnaire containing seventeen semantic differential belief statements measured using the five-point Likert scale was completed by four groups of students; first-year civilekonom students with/without an audit education background and, final-year civilekonom accounting students with/without an audit education background (n=137). The questionnaire covered topics on; auditors’ responsibilities, audit reliability, and decision usefulness. The results of the study indicate audit education partially (at α 0.05) had an impact in reducing the AEG on the responsibilities of auditors especially on issues related to; auditors’ responsibility in maintaining accounting records, management’s responsibility for preparing the annual financial statements and auditors’ judgment in selecting audit procedures. However, audit education had no impact on auditors’ responsibilities in detecting fraud, audit reliability and reliability of financial statements, and decision usefulness. Furthermore, the limited sample size, low response rate and use of convenience sampling may affect the generalizability of the results. Additionally, the Cronbach Alpha would have been more reliable if more participants were involved. This study concludes by calling on educational institutions in Sweden to update their accounting curriculum to encompass topics related to the nature, scope, and limitations of audits based on ISA and ABL. Moreover, this study recommends the audit profession and regulators to design and implement policies aimed at improving users understanding of the nature, scope, and limitations of an audit through audit education, refresher courses and other forms of audit-user communication. This study extends previous studies on the AEG by ascertaining the role of audit education in narrowing the AEG. Keywords: Audit Education and Function, Users knowledge, Audit Expectation Gap, International Standards on Auditing, Swedish Company Act, Sweden. 4 Abbreviations AEG: Audit Expectation Gap AICPA: American Certified Public Accountants ABL: Swedish Company Act AA: Auditors’ Act (Revisorslag 2001:883) IESBA: International Ethics Standard Board for Accountants IAASB: International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board CS1: First-year Civilekonom Students (Not enrolled for any audit course) CS2: Firs-year Civilekonom Students (Enrolled for at least one audit course) CS3: Final-year Civilekonom Student-Accounting (Enrolled for audit courses) CS4: Final-year Civilekonom Student-Accounting (Not enrolled for any audit course) LLC: Limited Liability Company SRS: Swedish Association of Auditors FAR: The Swedish Institute of Authorized Public Accountants GAAS: Generally Accepted Auditing Standards SMEs: Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises 5 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................................. 9 1.1. Background of the Study ...................................................................... 9 1.2. Problem Statement .............................................................................. 12 1.3. Research Aim and Objective .............................................................. 13 1.4. Research Questions ............................................................................ 14 1.5. Significance and Motivation of Study ................................................ 14 1.6. Delimitation of Study ......................................................................... 15 1.7. Structure of Study ............................................................................... 15 2. Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses Development............................. 16 2.1. Definition of the Audit Expectation Gap ............................................ 16 2.2. Categorization of the Audit Expectation Gap..................................... 17 2.3. Factors Affecting the Expectation Gap .............................................. 18 2.3.1. The Complication of the Audit Function .................................... 19 2.3.2. The Audit Conflict of Interest .................................................... 19 2.3.3. Hindsight Evaluation of Audit Performance .............................. 20 2.3.4. Time gap to responding to the changing Public’s Audit Expectation ............................................................................................ 20 2.3.5. The Self-Regulated Nature of the Audit Profession .................. 21 2.3.6. The Unreasonable Expectation of the public ............................. 22 2.4. Remedies to the Audit Expectation Gap ............................................ 22 2.4.1. The Defensive Approach (Education) ....................................... 22 2.4.2. The Constructive Approach ....................................................... 24 2.4.2.1. Expanding the Scope of Audits ....................................... 24 2.4.2.2. Restructuring Audit Methodologies .............................. 25 2.4.2.3 Expanding Auditors’ Responsibilities and Performance 25 2.5. Global Evidence of the Audit Expectation Gap ................................. 26 2.6. Hypotheses Development ................................................................... 28 3. Audit Practice and the Expectation Gap in Sweden .................................. 30 3.1. Audit Background and Practice in Sweden ........................................ 30 3.2 Duties of Auditors based on the Swedish Company Act (ABL) of 2005 ................................................................................................................... 33 3.3. Audit Report Format Based on ISA-700 ............................................ 34 6 3.4. Audit Expectation Gap in Sweden ...................................................... 36 4. Methodology .............................................................................................. 38 4.1. Research Philosophy and Approach ................................................... 38 4.2. Research Design and Strategy ............................................................. 40 4.3. Data Collection.................................................................................... 41 4.3.1. Questionnaire ............................................................................. 41 4.3.2. Sample Population ..................................................................... 42 4.4. Quality of Instruments ........................................................................ 43 4.4.1. Validity ....................................................................................... 43 4.4.2. Reliability ................................................................................... 44 4.5. Analysis ............................................................................................... 44 4.6. Ethical Considerations ........................................................................ 45 4.7. Overview of questionnaire Statements for the Audit Expectation Gap .................................................................................................................... 45 5. Results ........................................................................................................ 54 5.1. Demographic Information of Usable Respondents ............................. 54 5.2. Results from Semantic Differential Belief Statements ....................... 56 5.2.1. Auditors’ Responsibilities .......................................................... 56 5.2.2. Reliability of Audits and Audited Financial Statements ............ 60 5.2.3. Usefulness of Audited Financial Statements.............................. 64 5.3. Hypotheses Testing ............................................................................. 66 6. Discussion .................................................................................................. 69