External audit quality : revue of literature

Abstract

An audit quality is a major governance mechanism at the service of shareholders and all stakeholders of a company. However, the quality of audit is very complex to assess, which has led to the development of several approaches intending to measure the audit quality. This article aims to present, through a literature review, the determinants of audit quality by presenting the two approaches of research that have been distinguished in this field: the first relates to the indirect approach which is based on indicators linked to the auditor and to the institutional framework of the service of audit, and the second one focuses on the technical audit process and its environment. It comes out that the audit quality is multidimensional and that several models have been proposed to assess the quality of this service. These models are of two types, uni-variable or multi-variable and are based on the characteristics of the auditor and his team, those of the auditee and the audit process and the characteristics related to the audit environment.