Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

Many studies defined and determined factors influencing the audit quality; researchers, in these studies, have agreed that auditor’s behavior has a strong role in influencing the external financial audit quality in an audit firm. Auditor’s behavior itself can be impacted by many factors such as audit fees, audit firm size, and obviously culture. The latter has a crucial role in orienting, influencing and predicting the professional and the personal behavior in an organizational context. Although, many studies tackled culture’s influence on accounting standards, studies on culture’s impact on audit quality are still very rare. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the role of culture in determining and predicting the audit quality using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions framework. Data collection and data analysis of this study are based on quantitative approach using a questionnaire. Forty participants in this survey are auditors working for an international audit firm (one of the Big Four); they use the same IT and the same audit procedures, but they work in different countries. The participants were chosen randomly from Deloitte Nearshore Morocco, Deloitte France, Deloitte USA. The data analysis was done through a linear regression. The results confirmed that the audit quality depends on culture. Auditors- adopting cultures encouraging Collectivism, Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity- tend to deliver good audit mission quality. However, more efforts should be done by the audit firms to avoid the negative impact of excess of Individualism and Femininity dimensions on the audit quality.