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Previous studies within auditing have indicated that actors located in the center of the organizational field are more likely to have the resources needed in order to instigate change. Although it is acknowledged that actors located in the periphery might have incentives to change the organizational field, they are often viewed as unlikely change agents, as they are presumed to lack enough leverage. Furthermore, a view in institutional theory is that change from within an organizational field is regarded to develop incrementally, through a step-by-step process. This monograph overthrows the above assumptions by showing how change within auditing can originate from peripheral actors and succeed through an intertangled process involving multiple players. The empirical material consists of 45 interviews and extensive documents, gathered during 2014 – 2020. By using a qualitative method, the studied process illustrates how standard setting within auditing have changed from a notion of one size fits all, according to 'an audit is an audit', to a possibility to use more than one audit standard issued by the International Auditing and Assurance Board, (IAASB). By using institutional theory as theoretical framework the process is analyzed through the concepts of institutional change and institutional entrepreneurship. As the studied process includes both peripheral and central actors, that act because of different agendas, but ultimately work together to advocate an idea of change in the organizational field, a new perspective on institutional entrepreneurship is formed. In contrast to previous literature and the perception that institutional change through institutional entrepreneurship is about one actor or one organization, that succeeds to change the organizational field, the dissertation show how change is made possible because of the engagement of several actors. These actors are responding to the same precipitating jolts that enables institutional entrepreneurship, but for different reasons. The different actors also theorizes the need for change with connection to the same underlying argument, i.e. that the way an audit of less complex entities (LCE) is performed is in need of improvement – an argument that was not highly valued in the beginning of the change process. The studied change therefore concerns a shift in institutional meaning that makes room for a diversification of audit standards and the possibility of a separate standard for the audit of LCE, with the aim to facilitate auditing in this segment. Hence, the analysis also deconstructs the meaning of the mantra 'an audit is an audit' and shows how the meaning has shifted from the institutional meaning of 'an audit is an audit – according to ISA' to 'an audit is an audit – according reasonable assurance'.

International audience ; This paper presents the issue of private audit firms growing involvement in auditing public government. It compares the results of a traditional French jurisdictional audit from the Chambre Régionale des Comptes and the results of a private audit of the same local government: Nice Municipality. It aims at questioning the ongoing movement tending, according to the New Public Management ideology, to replace classical audit processes by practices directly inspired by private management. ; Cet article présente la question du développement de l'audit externe des collectivités publiques par les cabinets privés. Il s'attache à comparer les résultats obtenus par un audit juridictionnel classique de la Chambre Régionale des Comptes et ceux obtenus par un audit mené par un cabinet privé sur la même collectivité locale : la Ville de Nice. Il s'agit de s'interroger sur l'apport d'un mouvement qui suit les réformes de type New Public Management et qui tend à remplacer le contrôle juridictionnel classique par des outils directement issus du privé.

International audience ; This paper presents the issue of private audit firms growing involvement in auditing public government. It compares the results of a traditional French jurisdictional audit from the Chambre Régionale des Comptes and the results of a private audit of the same local government: Nice Municipality. It aims at questioning the ongoing movement tending, according to the New Public Management ideology, to replace classical audit processes by practices directly inspired by private management. ; Cet article présente la question du développement de l'audit externe des collectivités publiques par les cabinets privés. Il s'attache à comparer les résultats obtenus par un audit juridictionnel classique de la Chambre Régionale des Comptes et ceux obtenus par un audit mené par un cabinet privé sur la même collectivité locale : la Ville de Nice. Il s'agit de s'interroger sur l'apport d'un mouvement qui suit les réformes de type New Public Management et qui tend à remplacer le contrôle juridictionnel classique par des outils directement issus du privé.

International audience ; This paper presents the issue of private audit firms growing involvement in auditing public government. It compares the results of a traditional French jurisdictional audit from the Chambre Régionale des Comptes and the results of a private audit of the same local government: Nice Municipality. It aims at questioning the ongoing movement tending, according to the New Public Management ideology, to replace classical audit processes by practices directly inspired by private management. ; Cet article présente la question du développement de l'audit externe des collectivités publiques par les cabinets privés. Il s'attache à comparer les résultats obtenus par un audit juridictionnel classique de la Chambre Régionale des Comptes et ceux obtenus par un audit mené par un cabinet privé sur la même collectivité locale : la Ville de Nice. Il s'agit de s'interroger sur l'apport d'un mouvement qui suit les réformes de type New Public Management et qui tend à remplacer le contrôle juridictionnel classique par des outils directement issus du privé.

The faith in financial reporting quality and the corresponding auditing process has suffered a lot within the last decade, due to significant accounting scandals (e.g. Enron, WorldCom, Parmalat, etc.). As an answer to these accounting scandals, the law-makers in Germany and the European Union, respectively, have strengthened audit regulations in order to improve the quality of the conducted audits. The aim of this cumulative dissertation is to provide empirical evidence on the effects of intended and already implemented regulative audit requirements in Germany. ln order to consider the wide range of different audit requirements, the dissertation is based on four different study manuscripts, highlighting various perspectives with regard to the appointment, duration, and remuneration of a statutory auditor in the German audit environment. Besides the empirical evidence for separate auditing issues, this dissertation is also aimed to provide a solid theoretical background and critical suggestions for future research.:I. Audit services, non-audit services, and audit firm tenure – three perspectives on audit quality … 1 II. Abnormal audit fees and audit quality in German audit market: initial evidence on association of audit fee premiums and audit fee discounts with earnings management … 13 III. Effects of initial audit fee discounts on audit quality: evidence from Germany … 32 IV. Non-audit services and audit quality: blessing or curse? … 60 V. Relationship of auditor tenure to audit quality: empirical evidence from the German audit market … 89

Policymakers and regulators have been concerned about the impact of audit market concentration resulting from decline in the number of audit firms due to mergers and the demise of Arthur Andersen. In this paper we find a positive association between audit market concentration (Herfindahl index) at the MSA level and audit quality (measured by discretionary accruals and the Dechow-Dichev (2002) measure of accrual quality). We control for fixed year effects, therefore our results are unlikely to be affected by the increase in concentration due to Andersen's demise contemporaneous with an increase in audit quality because of regulatory measures such as SOX. Our results are robust to alternative concentration and audit quality measures, and several sensitivity tests attempting to rule out omitted variables correlated with client firms' MSA location or attributes of clients and auditors. Our results are also robust to controls for endogeneity between audit market concentration and audit quality. Our evidence therefore supports the Government Accountability Office (2003, 2008) conclusions that increased audit market concentration is not currently a cause for concern.