Reduced audit quality acts: A review and organizational model

Abstract

With increasing regulatory focus on improving audit quality, research on drivers of audit quality remains important to academics, professionals and regulators. One compelling branch of this research focuses on auditors' intentional actions that reduce audit quality, often referred to in the literature as reduced audit quality acts (RAQAs). This paper provides a review and synthesis of the RAQA literature, including a unifying definition for RAQAs and a model for organizing past and future RAQA research. With the model, we explore antecedents to RAQAs as well as the discovery of, responses to and subsequent consequences of RAQAs. We also discuss potential avenues for future research.