Conformity pressure and auditors’ judgement

: How peers affect one another in audit firms in Sweden?

Abstract

Although gazillion of studies have been conducted regarding what influences auditors’ judgment, few studies examined the impact of conformity pressure on auditors’ judgment. Despite the few attempts to discover this area, different results rendered from these studies.The purpose of this study is to explain how the conformity pressures affect auditors’ judgement. The effect of other factors was taken into consideration such as professional commitment, Locus of control and the characteristics of Swedish culture. The method was quantitative using data collected by surveys sent to auditors working in big-four and non-big-four audit firms.The findings show that conformity pressure does not affect the judgment of the Swedish auditors.The limitations of the study are the number of responses received through the survey and the difficulty of accurately target the Swedish auditors.