Les pratiques adaptatives d'audit : essai d'observation et d'interprétation des pratiques d'audit légal actuelles, en France

Literature review shows that former research hardly describes auditing because it's a complex and unobservable process. Past studies investigate audit processes with indirect methodology. This qualitative research aims to gain a better understanding of the complexity of auditor's judgement by obtaining experimental data collaborating with the audit team as a participant-observer. The approach is quite innovating: whereas past studies compare audits performed by big audit firms with audits performed by small audit firms, we think that the comparison between audit made by specialised auditors and audit made by occasional auditors makes more sense. It appears that polyvalent auditors (accountants) hardly comply with strict rules: they simplify and adapt legal rules. The aim is to gain a closer insight into the motivation of auditors using or not auditing standards: we think that the polyvalent auditors do not know these rules as well as they should, which deals with the theory of convention. Past studies show that there is good reason to believe that the auditor will not always act in the best interests of the principal (agency theory). Some recent thinking suggests that it is better to allow certified accountants to do auditing in small entities and to keep legal auditors in big ones. Following this trend, we would explain the present results as further evidence of this disposition.