توسيع نطاق الخدمات المهنية و آثاره على مكاتب المراجعة التي تعمل في المملكة العربية السعودية

Abstract EN

This paper aims to determine the nature and extent of changes that occurred within audit firms operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, resulting particularly from expanding the extent of their professional services which they provide to the public.

The significance of this paper comes, in one hand, from providing a basis upon which future evaluation of the significance and appropriateness of such an expansion can be undertaken, and, on the other hand, determining the legitimacy of such an expansion and, in particular, the extent to which audit firms under research can be seen as superior to other type of professional firms in providing management, financial and technological services beside providing their traditional audit and accounting-related services.

The results of this paper are derived from a qualitative empirical study that has been conducted on four selected audit firms operating within the Saudi auditing environment.

The results of this study suggest that the expansion of professional services which the audit firms under research had undertaken has led to the occurrence of changes that affect part of the intangible concepts embedded within these firms which normally constitute their cultural and societal bases, as well as some of their tangible or technical concepts.

In the light of the details of the theoretical approach that has been applied in collecting and analysing the empirical data, this paper concludes that the remarkable split in the views of members of the audit firms under research regarding the extent to which they accept the results of these changes must reflect in describing their nature and occurrence procedure.