Why voluntarily return to auditing? : A study on small firms in Sweden that voluntarily returned back to auditing after abandoning it after the law changed in 2010

Abstract: In 2010 the new law change regarding voluntary auditing in Sweden was implemented. The law change implies small sized companies are exempted from mandatory auditing unless they fulfil certain criteria’s. Despite the fact auditing is voluntary for small sized companies some still choose to be audited. Therefore it is interesting to find out why some companies see benefits in voluntary auditing and of existing literature there is mainly focus on some characteristics for choosing auditing. It can be assumed companies that made the choice to abandon auditing evaluated costs higher than benefits but re-evaluated their decision and later returned back. Therefore it is of interest to have a closer look on these companies first abandoning auditing and later changed to voluntary auditing. To our knowledge, there is a research gap on the characteristics for choosing auditing among small sized companies in Sweden returning back to auditing when not obligated to. The aim of our study is therefore to examine the relationship between selected characteristics of the small firms in Sweden and the decision to voluntarily return to be audited again after abandoning it after the law changed. Based on existing literature, selected characteristics are firm size, ownership structure, leverage and profitability.  To achieve the purpose of this study a quantitative method with a deductive approach was applied. In order to answer our purpose, hypotheses were developed according to relevant theories and previous literature. Data regarding the companies first abandoning and then returning back to auditing were collected and downloaded from the database Retriever. Our hypotheses were tested using a logistic regression. The results indicate there is a positive relationship between firm size and the choice to return to voluntary auditing. The same was also discovered for ownership structure. Our findings cannot confirm any relationship between leverage and voluntary auditing or profitability and voluntary auditing even though our results indicate a positive relationship.