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Mattias Haraldsson. Photo.

Mattias Haraldsson

Senior lecturer

Mattias Haraldsson. Photo.

Explaining municipal audit costs in Sweden : Reconsidering the political environment, the municipal organisation and the audit market

Author

  • Sven Olof Collin
  • Mattias Haraldsson
  • Torbjörn Tagesson
  • Veronica Blank

Summary, in English

With the purpose of explaining professional audit costs in Swedish municipalities, we hypothesised that audit costs are partly driven by various signalling and monitoring incentives in order to manage stakeholder relationships. Our model of the determinants of audit costs was tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organisations in a Scandinavian institutional context. The test supported to some extent the traditional propositions of organisational complexity, risk and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the political environment. Our results indicate that audit costs are used to signal accountability, thereby suggesting that audit as a signal could be managed without managing professional auditors.

Department/s

  • Department of Business Administration

Publishing year

2017-11

Language

English

Pages

391-405

Publication/Series

Financial Accountability and Management

Volume

33

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Topic

  • Business Administration

Keywords

  • Audit costs
  • Governance
  • Municipality
  • Sweden

Status

Published

Project

  • Public Management Research

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0267-4424