Since 1983 all Swedish companies are legally obliged to allow themselves to be audited. Recently the question of whether small companies should be subject to this or not has frequently been discussed. Many find it superfluous and think it ought to be abolished. In England small companies no longer have to be audited. However, in a study by Jill Collis it has been shown that a large number of companies choose to be audited although there is no obligation for them to do so. They imply that there are other factors which influence the company’s choice of whether to be audited or not.

The purpose of our study is to explain on which factors can affect a small company’s decision to be audited or not. Our theories have been formulated by studying institutional and economical relations in accountancy. The research was carried out by means of telephone interviews on respondents of 250 companies which are classed as small companies in accordance with EC regulations.

Our data was subsequently tested in SPSS. Only three of our eleven hypotheses cannot be falsified so far. The factors that explains a company does choose to be audited is board competition, bonus system and the size of the company. In certain hypotheses a tendency to correlation can be seen, but these cannot be statistically verified.