| Summary: | With an increasingly competitive market-driven audit, where customers are concerned abouttheir costs and are looking for cheap options, audit agencies try to provide audit fees based onthat demand. Audit agencies are forced to maximize their profits and supervise their costs whilemaintaining a high level of audit quality. Audit fees are governed by the setup of time budgetsand deadlines that auditors will work with. The recent scandals within the auditing professionhave focused attention on the quality of the audit and on the two types of time pressure shown tobe able to have a negative effect on audit quality. Previous research has reported that timepressure, caused by time budgets and deadlines, leads the auditors to take short cuts in their workto keep tight goals in a dysfunctional manner. The research also indicates that perceived timepressure and dysfunctional shortcuts differs between auditors with different agency affiliationand between auditors with different formal competence.The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the extent to which Swedish auditorsexperience time pressure caused by time budgets and deadlines, and the extent to whichdysfunctional shortcuts occurs. We also intend to make comparisons between auditors withdifferent agency affiliation and between auditors with different formal competence.A web-based survey was sent to Swedish auditors across the country and 291 responses werereceived. More than one out of three auditors who participated in our study indicated that theyexperienced time pressure at a level that was not sustainable. Dysfunctional shortcuts that coulddamage audit quality occurred as actions against time pressure caused by time budgets anddeadlines. The problems with time pressure seemed to be more complicated among larger auditfirms since the dysfunctional shortcuts occurred to a greater extent. Auditors with lower formalcompetence experienced more time pressure and used dysfunctional shortcuts to a greater extentthan auditors with higher formal competence.
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