Revisionsutskott - Lagreglering eller självreglering?

Sammanfattning: Title: Audit Committee - Legal regulation or self-regulation? Seminar date: 2021-01-15 Course: FEKH69, Degree Project Undergraduate level, Business Administration, Undergraduate level, 15 University Credits Points (UPC or ECTS-cr) Authors: Zeinab Amani, Frank Gori, Kevin Titikic Advisor: Karin Jonnergård Key words: Audit committee, Legal regulation, Self-regulation, Comply or explain, Corporate governance. Purpose: The thesis intends to examine and analyze the arguments put forward by relevant parties in the debate for and against legal regulation versus self-regulation of audit committees. The intention is thus to gain a deeper understanding of why legal regulation was chosen over self-regulation with regard to audit committees. Methodology: In order to be able to answer the research question, material in the form of primary and secondary data has been collected and then the collected data has been analyzed with a conventional content analysis based on an inductive approach. The study’s primary data consists of the author’s own analyzes of some of the material, while the secondary data is information collected from books, articles and opinions. Theoretical perspective: The theory of the study consists of institutional theories and public interest theory and capture theory that deal with the main topics in the study and provide a good basis for our empirical research and the analytical section. The choice of theory was made after reviewing the selected empirical material, in order to ensure relevance between the theory and the empirical section. Empirical foundation: The empiric consists mostly of consultative opinions with regard to audit committees from various agencies and articles from the journal of auditing industry “Balans”. The data collected describes the positions that the various consultative agencies had regarding the audit committee's regulations. Conclusions: The study has shown that a detailed analysis has not been carried out by relevant agencies on which type of regulation would have been more suitable for audit committees. The most crucial arguments for legal regulation seems to be the legitimate anchoring and the extended scope. Finally, it seems that audit committees have been introduced as a result of an international trend with more legal regulation and that some agencies have played a more dominant role in the process.