Auditors’ perceptions on work adaptability in remote audit: a COVID-19 perspective

Impact of remote audit on audit quality, audit efficiency, and auditors' job satisfaction

“…Auditors also reported that their intentions to reduce audit quality practices did not change much (Mean = 3.06, SD = 0.65), and their job satisfaction (Mean = 3.43, SD = 1.09) and audit efficiency (Mean = 3.37, SD = 1.03) both increased from on-site to remote audits. Although many of these changes are reshaping audit success (i.e., audit quality, audit efficiency, and auditors' job satisfaction), being remote itself seems to improve auditors' audit efficiency which was also observed by Choudhury et al (2021) as well as by Farcane et al (2023). In addition, the personal quality of flexible management competency, having a better physical working environment, and organizational support all enhance audit success in remote environments.…”

“…Although research based on signal detection theory suggests an unacceptably high trade‐off between audit effectiveness and audit efficiency in fraud detection tasks, Pincus et al (1999) found no evidence of a significant effectiveness–efficiency trade‐off. Farcane et al (2023) found that auditors exhibited a great degree of adaptability and work efficiency during remote work; the audit activity outcome is enhanced, and the perceived audit efficiency is improved when audit firms embrace emergent technologies in the new digital workplace. Although traditional working‐from‐home (WFH) programmes allow employees to work during a desired time period, Choudhury et al (2021) found that work‐from‐anywhere programmes providing geographic flexibility led to higher productivity than WFH programmes.…”

“…However, large accounting firms are also concerned that young auditors will lose out on valuable in‐person experiences (Daly, 2021; Taylor, 2021). Farcane et al (2023) warned that the transition to remote audits leads to increased auditors' liability and audit risks if innovative emerging audit technologies are not properly implemented.…”

“…We define audit success when the audit exhibits high audit quality, high audit efficiency, and high auditors' job satisfaction. Existing studies have reported variances in the audit quality (Gong et al, 2022; Handoko & Lindawati, 2021; Jin et al, 2022; Thompson, 2022), audit efficiency (Choudhury et al, 2021; Farcane et al, 2023), and auditors' satisfaction (Aquino et al, 2022; Grant et al, 2018; Rani et al, 2018) from on‐site audits to remote audits. To answer the critical question of how to ensure audit quality and efficiency and retain audit employees in the remote auditing environment, research efforts are needed to systematically understand what leads to variances in audit quality, audit efficiency, and auditors' job satisfaction.…”

Self-efficacy, remote audit proficiency, effort, and performance in the COVID-19 crisis: an auditor’s perspective

“…To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first empirical evidence on how remote audit proficiency affects the performance and effort of external auditors. We expand the findings of Eulerich et al (2022) who examine the perception of internal auditors in terms of differences in their quality and users' confidence between traditional and remote audit and the study of Farcane et al (2022) that examines factors influencing the auditors' adaptability of remote audits. Our result suggests that the contribution of remote audit proficiency to auditors' good performance was not trivial during the COVID-19 crisis.…”