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Purpose, Mission, Strategy

The Dutch Foundation for Auditing Research (FAR), announced earlier as ‘Accountancy Lab’, was launched in Amsterdam on October 20, 2015. The audit profession is undergoing significant changes in respect of expectations and demands. FAR focuses on enhancing the knowledge of what makes a good audit today and on sustainably improving audit practices. 

FAR’s research agenda is focused on relevant and rigorous academic research into audit quality drivers to inform the audit profession in its further development and improvement of audit quality. In doing so, FAR considers:

  • the underlying drivers of auditor judgment and decision-making, such as organisational circumstances that may stimulate auditors or, conversely, prevent them from working in the manner expected of them;
  • the underlying causes of good and poor audit quality (rather than the symptoms of those causes); and
  • the effectiveness of potential interventions (organisational changes and levers of control) that have been implemented to enhance audit quality, including the monitoring of these interventions.

FAR believes that research has the potential to identify those factors that influence audit quality in daily practice. To that end, FAR supports projects using multiple research approaches and methods to arrive at a balanced, evidence-based perspective of informing the continuous improvement of the audit practice as well as the public debate and policy making. 

In determining the research agenda, FAR takes the perspective of the profession at large and its stakeholders throughout the entire corporate reporting and assurance supply chain. This agenda involves the following two approaches in particular: on the one hand, to unlock academic knowledge in order to apply it in practice and, on the other, to define, invite, and evaluate research proposals speaking to promising new research directions. In this, the focus is on strengthening the core aspects of audit quality in areas such as audit inputs, the audit process, the auditor’s intention and behavior, audit outcomes, and finally the organisation, management, and culture of audit firms.

Research projects should result in original research that (a) adds to the practical insight for sustainably strengthening auditing practices and education, (b) is of such quality that it can be published in the reputable international auditing and accounting journals (although relevance goes above publication value – not above rigor), and (c) is executed by the best international research teams, including new as well as experienced research faculty from the Netherlands and abroad. More information on our Research Projects and Papers can be found under “Research & Publications”.