Digitization and Auditors : A study on the impact of digitization on auditors' work during covid-19

Abstract: Since the beginning of 2020 covid-19 has been declared as a public health crisis. Whatfollowed when restrictions were introduced in the world, were that many people wereforced to work from home. Our study will investigate the work of auditors at the largeraudit firms in Sweden. The purpose of this study is to find out how auditors work has beenaffected by the industry's increasing digitization during covid-19. A qualitative methodhas been used to answer the following research questions;In what way has digitization changed the way auditors work during covid-19?Could some of these changes remain after covid-19 has ended?Five auditors have been interviewed from KPMG, PwC, and Grant Thornton. By using thestudys collection of theories the responses from the interviews were analyzed. The chapterwith empirical findings is where the data collection is gathered. Here it shows that covid-19 has affected the auditors work in both a positive and negative manner. The mainpositive side of covid-19 is that work became even more flexible than before. Thenegative side is that the social interactions were missing. Digital tools and equipment haveoverall been of great value during covid-19, though perhaps not to a larger extent thanbefore covid-19. Further, now that the restrictions had been lifted, our respondents saw afuture of working from home more continuously and being able to dictate their ownworking hours with the help of digital tools and equipment.