In today's society there is tougher climate both financially and time wise. Accountants working under tight deadlines leading to the compromise between quality and quantity in the audit process and them therefor are being guilty of so-called reduced audit quality, RAQ. Reduced audit quality involves intentional actions designed to somehow reduce the evidence contained in the audit. We examine in this study the impact of time budget pressure (TBP), underreporting of time (URT), ethical organizational culture and charismatic leadership has on the frequency of RAQ.

Previous research has already shown that there are clear links between TBP and RAQ, between URT and RAQ and between ethical culture in organizations and audit quality available. Five hypotheses were designed to the study. Four of these deal with the factors mentioned above, the fifth addresses the charismatic leadership's impact on RAQ.

Of the hypotheses established in the study two were certainly accepted, it was the link between RAQ and TBP and the link between URT and TBP. We found even partial acceptance of the ethical organizational culture related to RAQ however, the hypothesis could not be fully accepted.

A survey was conducted among certified public accountants in Sweden. The survey resulted in 185 respondents. The analysis of this study showed that there are clear links between time budget pressure and reduced audit quality. The ethical culture of the organization showed some links with RAQ, but not as whole but on a more specific plan for different parts of the ethical culture. We did not find any evidence that charismatic leadership would affect audit quality in any direction.

Keywords

: RAQ, time budget pressure, charismati