STUDY ON THE PERCEPTION OF THE CORPORATE PERFORMANCE IN ACCOUNTING AND AUDIT FIRMS

The environment in which the accounting and auditing firms operate is changing. The economic, technological and financial contexts directly affect their business. In addition, the customers have become more fastidious in terms of the nature, the speed and the precision of the required services. All these developments force the firms to improve their organization by incorporating appropriate performance measurement systems. The objective of this paper is to examine how the organizational performance it is perceived in accounting and auditing firms. In this sense, we checked the perspectives of the balanced scorecard model in a Big Four office and in a small office. The sample consists of 10 Romanian auditors. Eight of auditors are working in one of the Big Four. To achieve this study, were selected only managers. The other two auditors operate in a small office, they being, at the same time, also associates. The sample is homogeneous in terms of the training, the sector of activity and experience. To enable an objective analysis of results, the name of the offices will not be made public. The results showed that in the Big Four office all four perspectives of the balanced scorecard model are checked, while in the small office the number of perspectives is lower, because learning is informal and not materialized. On this perspective, the Big Four office, periodically analyzes the results and try to identify the causes that led to differences in the objectives set. Possible causes that were invoked: overloading of the auditor, additional works, not included in the letter of assignment and the lack of competence of the auditor. Regarding the internal perspective, each office has its own mode, but obviously the Big Four office has human, logistics and financial resources more important, that enabling it to keep its reputation in the market. Instead, the financial goals are the same for both offices analyzed: profitability increasing