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The purpose of this paper is to explain how auditors’ professional and organizational identities are associated with commercialization in audit firms. Unlike previous studies exploring the consequences of commercialization in the firms, the study directs its attention toward the potential driver of commercialization, which the authors argue to be the identities of the auditors.

The paper is based on 374 responses to a survey distributed to 3,588 members of FAR, the professional association of accountants, auditors and advisors in Sweden. The study used established measures of organizational and professional identity and introduced market, customer and firm process orientation as aspects of commercialization. The study explored the data through descriptive statistics, principle component analysis and correlation analysis and tested the hypotheses with multiple linear regression analysis.

The findings indicated that the organizational identity of auditors has a positive association with three aspects of commercialization: market orientation, customer orientation and firm process orientation. Contrary to the arguments based on prior literature, the study has found that the professional identity of auditors is also a positively associated with commercialization. This indicates a change of the role of professional identity vis-à-vis commercialization of audit firms. The positive association between professional identity and commercial orientation could indicate the development of “organizational professionalism.” The study also found differences between the association between professional identity and commercialization in Big 4 and non-Big 4 firms. While in Big 4 firms, professional identity is positively associated only with the firm’s process orientation, in non-Big 4 firms, professional identity has a positive association with all three aspects of commercialization.

The paper provides insight into how auditors’ identities have influenced commercialization of audit firms and into the normalizing of commercialization within auditing. The study also developed a new instrument for measuring commercialization, one based on market, customer and firm process orientation concepts. This paper suggests that this instrument is an alternative to the observation through proxies.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the commercialization of audit firms relates to the subjective well-being (SWB) of auditors. Drawing on the conservation of resources and social identity theories, the authors argue that the commercialization of audit firms enhances auditors’ subjective well-being in its overall happiness and job-related dimensions through two theoretical mechanisms. First, it constitutes a valuable resource for an auditor, and second, it reinforces the auditor’s identification with a firm. The authors subsequently contend that this relation is contingent on whether auditors are used in Big four or non-Big four audit firms.

The authors test our hypotheses-based data obtained from a survey of 166 Swedish auditors. The data are explored by means of descriptive statistics, correlation matrixes and linear moderating multiple regression analyzes.

The authors show that commercial orientation can have a positive effect on auditors’ SWB. The authors also find that the positive relationship between commercialization and SWB is stronger for auditors employed by one of the Big four firms.

The results contribute to the ongoing debate about the normalization of commercialization within the audit profession by theorizing on and providing empirical support for the positive consequences of commercialization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore why audit assistants leave the audit profession. By including both the perceptions held by audit assistants that left the audit profession and the perceptions of audit assistants still working in the audit profession, this study aims to explore how determinants of job satisfaction are associated with decisions to leave the audit profession.

To explore the association between determinants of job satisfaction and decisions to leave, a survey was developed based on a literature review of determinants of job satisfaction. The survey was sent to both current and former Swedish audit assistants. The subsequent analysis was based on 231 complete surveys, of which 78 were from former audit assistants.

The main finding of this study is that there is a negative association between the choice to leave the profession and audit assistants’ perceptions of the profession and between the choice to leave and work-life balance. Another finding was that met expectations and Big 4 were found to be positively associated with career change.

By approaching both current and former audit assistants, this study contributes to the literature on audit employee turnover by exploring determinants of actual career change, rather than turnover intentions. It also contributes by identifying and testing a variable not previously used as a determinant of job satisfaction, namely, perceptions of the audit profession.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a concept of auditor as consigliere in family firms, that captures additional functions to monitoring, those of advice, mediating, and conveying.

The concept is tested through a survey conducted on 309 Swedish auditors.

The data indicate that the consigliere role is generally not emphasized, indicating that auditors primarily perform the monitoring role of the audit. However, the authors do find indications of the auditor performing the consigliere role, through performing the advisory and mediating functions and, to a smaller degree, the conveying function.

The survey is limited in response rate and in separating governance situations from consigliere functions.

With reservation for professional independence, the auditor as consigliere could be part of the governance of the family firm, but should be trained for this activity.

Regulators should pay attention to the consigliere role when, for example, stipulating compulsory rotation of auditors.

The paper shows that the auditor is more than a monitor in family firms. The consigliere role, even if not at all dominating, has to be considered, at least in family firms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how internationalisation of corporate governance mechanisms influences firm performance.

The paper is based on the data collected from annual reports of the year 2004, from all 239 Swedish corporations listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, on which a quantitative analysis was performed.

The findings suggest that internationalisation of corporate governance does not have a straightforward influence on firm performance, which can be due to: the fact that mechanisms with governance functions have several functions, of which governance is but one; and the fact that governance mechanisms cannot be analyzed in isolation, since they are included in a coherent corporate governance strategy.

The paper is the first to investigate the corporate governance mechanisms' internationalisation issue.