The Pattern Restricting Monopolism and Negative Machiavellian Property of Auditors with emphasis on Critical Theory

This study strives to assess the underlying and effective factors of monopolism and Machiavellian biases in audit and present some strategies for them to improve auditors' judgment quality in the light of accounting critical theory using grounded theory.

Since Machiavellian traits and monopolism in audit tend to have the desire for elitism, the statistical society of this study comprises professional academic accounting professors, stakeholders of audit institutes, and top managers of audit organizations. This research has been implemented during 2021 and 2022 using composite purposive sampling, and 12 in-depth and semi-structured interviews until reaching theoretical saturation. Moreover, structural equation modeling (SEM) and PLS software have been used to examine the validity of the conceptual model of study.

Results showed that cultural, environmental, and social factors had an impact (0.276) on audit monopolism and also had an effect (0.463) on the Machiavellian biases of auditors. Structural and technical agents had 0.485 and 0.358 impact factors on monopolism and Machiavellian biases, respectively. Moreover, political governance in the audit profession influences (0.654) monopolism in the audit profession because regulatory bodies are close to the government. In addition, restrictive, legal, and regulatory factors have an impact factor of 0.368 on monopolism in the audit profession, and this component influence (0.597) the Machiavellian biases. Also, creating a foundation for increasing audit quality is one of the consequences of Restricting Monopolism in auditing and Machiavellian Property of auditors.

Restricting of Machiavellian characteristics and Monopolism in auditing can be achieved through strengthening the knowledge and skills of human resources, structural and technical reforms, economic improvement and political communication, determination in the implementation of laws and continuous monitoring of auditors' performance, and improves the quality of auditing services and Intellectual and practical maturity of auditors.

Contribution:

The novelty aspect of this study is mixing qualitative analysis and empirical experiments to identify factors affecting monopolism in audit and creating Machiavellian biases in Iran. To match with sorted viewpoints of audit professionals, some strategies are proposed to restrict these two phenomena influencing the quality of audits.