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UK audit reporting practices in the pre-ISA700 (2015 revision) era

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Abstract

Given its significance to stakeholders, the process of revising audit reports is an essential subject in today’s economic context. This study aims to detail relevant elements of this process by evaluating alterations to and developments of the audit report, as supported by international and regional standard-setters and regulators. To that end, we examine audit reports that have already applied new auditing regulations. This case study approach allows us to highlight UK audit-reporting practices both before and after the ISA 700 was issued and entered practice. Our findings reveal that in terms of content and content positioning, UK companies’ audit reports make use of the psychological effects of primacy versus serial position and have done so long before the applicability of the international standard for financial statements published after December 2016.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the Operational Programme Human Capital 2014-2020, under the project number POCU 123793 with the title ‘Researcher, future entrepreneur - New Generation’.

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Correspondence to Melinda-Timea Fülöp.

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Cordoș, GS., Fülöp, MT. & Tiron-Tudor, A. UK audit reporting practices in the pre-ISA700 (2015 revision) era. Asian J Bus Ethics 9, 349–370 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13520-020-00113-8

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