Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Map for Iranian Audit Firms

Iranian auditing firms face increasing challenges such as hyper-competition, underdevelopment, and severity of expectations gap. In order to exaltation and sustainably development, they require to meet multiple and complex performance objectives, which highlights the need for strategic planning and performance evaluation. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to provide a balanced scorecard and strategy map for Iranian auditing firms. The present research is qualitative and exploratory that is done by the method of grounded theory in the professional and academic area of Iran during 2019-2020. The research data collection is a triangular (triangulation) manner includes 25 semi-structured interviews, 38 secondary interviews, and qualitative analysis of 548 documents from Iranian professional journals. Findings showed that a balanced scorecard with five perspectives including financial, client, internal processes, learning and growth, and reputation, provides a comprehensive and purposeful framework for evaluating the strategic performance of Iranian audit firms. Furthermore, the results showed that the strategy map obtained from the balanced scorecard model provides a systematic and effective roadmap to meet the challenges and basic needs of Iranian audit firms and it can protect and support the growth and development of the audit firm and profession of the country.