Why Women Leave the Auditing Industry

Abstract

The auditing industry is facing a decrease in the number of employees and state-authorized public accountants. There is a tendency for the female accountants to seek other occupation than the auditing industry, when they reach higher in their carrier. This has given rise to research what factors that affects women’s decision to leave the auditing industry, and thus what the auditing firms can do to maintain them. This dissertation investigates why female accountants seek other occupation than this industry, and what changes the industry need to make in order to maintain female auditors. This study explores human behavior through analyzing and discussing the collected data by using motivational theories, such as Abraham Maslow’s behavioral hierarchy, Frederick Herzberg's two factor theory and Clayton Alderfer’s ERG theory. Furthermore, Karl Weick’s sensemaking theory will be used to detect where, when and if the sensemaking is occurring or not occurring for the female accountants. Due to the choice of the constructivist paradigm, the methods used to collect were 9 qualitative interviews and a qualitative and quantitively questionnaire with 55 respondents. The respondents in the interviews and the questionnaire are women that has left the accounting industry in the last 6 years. In the analysis, several challenges were identified in the industry such as, a lack of female role models, the large workload, lack of recognition and the lack of understanding of the prioritization of women with family. The findings this study resulted in led to a discussion of five significant challenges the accounting industry is facing and should consider investigating further and resolve.
In conclusion, challenges in relation to the accounting industry and being a woman in the industry were discovered. A revision and a review in the five significant challenges can maintain the female accountant to some extent and benefit the industry as a whole.