What strategies are used when creating and maintaining trust in an auditor-client context? : A comparative study between experienced and newly appointed auditors

Abstract: Background Trust is an important factor in many contexts, especially in inter firm relationships. Here, trust is essential in order to maintain the tenure of inter-organizational relationships. Auditors are in need of trust when it comes to accomplishing their audit tasks. Purpose The purpose of this research is to investigate how experienced and newly appointed auditors create and maintain trustful relationships with their clients. The research will focus on how auditors with different levels of experience approach their clients when building trust. By taking the limited mandate period of the auditor into consideration, the study will adopt a further aspect which has not been researched upon before. This will provide auditors as well as other professionals with insight of how to establish and maintain trustful relationships. Method The research will be conducted from an interpretivist standpoint, as the human interest will be in focus. The research method of this study has a qualitative approach, where eight interviews were conducted with auditors who were from the all of the Big 4. The auditor possesses different levels of experience. The empirical findings will be analyzed based on the stages of trust development by Lewicki and Bunker. Conclusion Availability, knowledge, experience and being able to identify the client’s needs were factors that were considered to be important when building trust. Prior relationship building was a deviant strategy used the experienced auditors. The limited term of office was not considered to affect the level of dedication to build trustful relationship with the client, the findings suggested that it rather was a motivation for the auditor to implement trust building strategies in an early stage of the relationship.