Förtroendet för revisorer : En kvantitativ studie om faktorer som påverkar stora företags förtroende för revisorer

Sammanfattning: The audit industry is not any industry; it is crucial to all business activities. However, the trust of the auditors has been questioned following the noted corporate scandals which revealed financial crime and accounting fraud. Since the scandals affected large companies the most, and that large companies have auditing obligations, it is important to investigate how the trust of auditors appears in this group. The purpose of the study is therefore to explore factors that affect large firm's trust in auditors. The study is however limited to only investigate this nationally. Based on previous research, it can be assumed that the auditor's competence, independence, confidentiality and laws and norms affect the large companies’ trust. The four factors constitute the study's independent variables and thus the developed model. To empirically test the model, a web-based survey has been conducted, resulting in 78 answers. All independent variables proved to be positively significant, which means that there is a statistically positive connection between each independent variable and the dependent variable trust. The conclusion of the study is therefor that large companies have greater trust for an auditor who has good competence, acts independently, maintains the confidentiality and follow laws and norms of the audit industry. Since we investigated factors that affect large firm's trust, it would be interesting to read a comparative analysis of factors affecting the trust of small, medium and large companies. Another interesting study would be to investigate how the auditor agencies market to reach both existing and potential clients.