Opportunistic Behavior and the Impact on Audit Quality in Albania
Opportunistic Behavior and the Impact on Audit Quality in Albania

Author(s): Shyquri Llaci, Blanka Hhani
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Economy
Published by: Udruženje ekonomista i menadžera Balkana
Keywords: Turnover intention; Time budget pressure; Client Importance; Personality type; Unethical behavior; Big 4; Audit firms; Auditors
Summary/Abstract: The 21st century has witnessed the bankruptcy of many large corporations because of the opportunistic behavior of management reflected in the financial statement. A realistic review from the board of directors to the internal management can only be carried out with genuine data, which are distributed along with the financial statements. This allows shareholders and other stakeholders to examine the company’s performance and make accurate decisions. All this control is carried out by external auditors who certify the financial statements. Although it is challenging to evaluate an auditor’s job, this paper sought to pinpoint the causes of their opportunistic conduct in this study. The authors examined five variables that could cause opportunistic behavior, including time budget pressure, client importance, personality type and turnover intention, and analyzed their attitude to critical ethical issues in situations they face during their work as external auditors. This research is based on the quantitative primary data. The sampled population is 150 auditors in Tirana, from the 236 certified auditors registered in Albania, until February 2023; also, from the 65 audit firms, only the Big 4 are taken, to gather primary data and regression analysis is used to examine every single one of them. The questionnaire was created based on previous studies and was distributed through a survey in Google Forms, using a hybrid data collection approach. As a primary step, a literature review was conducted regarding the ethical issues of an auditor during the audit of financial statements. The study concludes that time budget pressure, client importance, and personality type were the most important factors for the opportunistic behavior of auditors in Albania, and has found that the impact of the turnover factor is minimal.

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