Investigating the Relationship between Auditor Characteristics and Its Influence on the Type of Auditor's Opinion

Proper flow of information in the market causes participants to make correct and logical decisions, and finally, gives rise to economic development and improves social relations. Financial reporting and disclosure of information is one of the important sources of information. Providing auditor's opinion about the reports can play an important role in making financial decisions by users inside and outside the organization. In this study, given the importance of this issue, we are trying to investigate the relationship between auditor characteristics and its influence on the type of auditor's opinion. The influence of some factors such as auditor reputation, audit quality, audit firm size, and auditor tenure on the type of auditor's opinion was examined in this research. We studied 101 companies among companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange in a 4 year period from 2007 to 2011. The results of this study indicate that there is a significant inverse relationship between audit quality and auditor's opinion, but there is no significant relationship between the type of opinion and auditor's opinion. However, the main hypothesis of this study was approved which states that there is a significant relationship between auditor characteristics and its influence on the type of auditor's opinion.