| dc.description.abstract | It is a well-known and global phenomenon that we often see a significant greater number of men than women who holds the top executive jobs. Whether it´s in the finance sector, among audit firms or in other sectors who have a history of male-dominance, it´s rarely a surprise that the majority of the top executives are men. Throughout history, there has been a lot of research on gender equality in the business industry, for instance how gender bias and stereotypes can explain the big gap between men and women at the higher levels. The term “the glass ceiling” is often used as a description of different barriers that women need to overcome in order to get to the top in corporations. Familial factors are also mentioned to describe why fewer women than men get the top executive jobs. Something less studied, are the different factors behind women’s desire to someday become an audit partner. This master thesis seeks, based on a similar study from New Zealand (Whiting & Van Vugt, 2006), to lighten whether there are any differences between gender, family structure and firm size, regarding auditors’ career ambitions. Today, many of the big audit firms have active measures to try to increase the number of women at the higher positions. Therefore it´s useful to understand the factors behind auditors’ desire, for the firms to adjust their measures and increase the number of women.
Our study finds that women auditors in relationships with a partner who wants to pursue a career, have a higher desire to make partner in an audit firm, than equal men. Furthermore, we found that the desire to make partner is higher for auditors with children. Based on our study, we can conclude that there exist aspects within family structure that have an effect on auditors’ desire to make partner. By controlling for age, we find that the desire to make partner declines with an increasing age. Nevertheless, our study did not make any further significant findings, but we can observe small trends showing that the desire to make partner is lower for married auditors. In addition, we can observe that the audit students have the highest desire to make partner. Gender alone does not seem to contribute to auditors’ desire to make partner, but there might exist gender differences between auditors in relationships. Firm size does not seem to have an effect on the desire to make partner. However, our findings indicate that women affiliated with other than the Big Five-firms, may have a higher desire to make partner.
The findings of this study are relevant to audit firms, and the industry in general, who seeks to get a deeper knowledge of which factors that determine auditors’ desire to make partner. This master thesis is also relevant to those who wants to continue the research on auditors’ career path. | en_US |
