Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Map for Iranian Audit Firms

 Introduction
The purpose of this study is to develop a balanced scorecard and strategy map for Iranian audit firms. Auditing firms not only face increasing challenges such as hyper-competition, underdevelopment, and severity of expectations gap, but also deal with multiple and complex performance goals that require strategic planning and performance evaluation. Therefore, the present article seeks to discover a balanced scorecard and strategy map as a comprehensive system of strategic planning and performance evaluation, so as to provide a roadmap for success and sustainability for Iranian audit firms.
 
 Questions
According to the stated purpose, the present study seeks to answer the following two questions:
Q1: How should the balanced scorecard of Iranian audit firms be?
Q2: How is the appropriate strategic plan for Iranian audit firms?
 
 Method
The present study is a qualitative and exploratory research in the professional and academic area of Iran during the period 2019-2020 that identifies the key success factors of auditing firms through a grounded theory and then structures them in the form of a comprehensive balanced scorecard and a coherent strategy map. The research evidence was collected by snowball sampling. In this regard, three sources have been used including 25 semi-structured interviews, 38 secondary interviews, and qualitative analysis of 548 articles, roundtables, and interviews published in professional journals. Also, in order to determine the sample size, the theoretical saturation rule has been followed.
 
 Results
The findings showed that a balanced scorecard with five perspectives including finance, clients, internal processes, learning and growth, and reputation, provides a comprehensive and purposeful framework for evaluating the strategic performance of Iranian auditing firms. Also, the audit firm's strategy map showed how good reputation is linked to learning and growth, and then to the internal, business, and financial processes, turning the organization's intangible assets into economic capital, and again economic capital leads to the empowerment and sustainable development of reputation, and learning and growth perspectives. Therefore, the strategy map outlines the cycle of continuous evolution and progress of an audit firm and supports and protects it.
 
In this regard, the most fundamental aspect of the balanced scorecard of an audit firm is the perspective of good reputation. The presence of reputable partners institutionalizes the commitment to the public interest in the firm. As a result, the firm puts professionalism at the forefront of its work in accepting and continuing to work with owners and only establishes working relationships with honest and transparent owners. Continuation of this practice has led to the formation of an outstanding quality background for the firm in the audit profession market and the profession observers, and this provides the grounds for attracting international cooperation for the organization. The result of the strategic efforts of the firm in the perspective of good reputation can be observed and evaluated, to a large extent,  as a summary indicator of the institute.
Categories of reputation form the basis of a learning and growth perspective in an audit firm. In other words, a reputable firm employs personnel with the highest training quality and up-to-date technologies. In addition, the reputable firm has a higher capacity to nurture and satisfy its employees. On the other hand, a reputed audit firm is consciously and purposefully interested in achieving a special quality level as well as expanding the diversity of its services by using prominent experts and consultants. The product of the categories of learning and growth is the organization's access to experienced personnel, who with their unique abilities can transform the internal processes of the organization.
The most fundamental effect of learning and growth in the audit firm is the institutionalization of a special level of professionalism in the process of doing work, which makes the services of the firm uniquely attractive to the clients and the supervisory bodies of the profession. Next, the process of doing work in the leading firm is carried out under the supervision of experienced personnel and experts, and this phenomenon not only brings high quality services but also high productivity. The result of these categories is that they protect the internal processes of the firm from the two main challenges of doing the work, namely time pressure and fee pressure, and as a result, the intellectual capital of the firm is yielded in the form of high-quality services.
Then the firm with the obtained high-quality services from the perspective of internal processes can take over the market of highly prestigious clients. If this goal is met, the audit firm will not only be recognized as an industry expert but will also provide the organization with the opportunity to offer a variety of services. Also, with the branding of the firm, more clients come to it and the firm's market share changes dramatically. Finally, the outcome of the firm's strategic efforts from the perspective of the balanced scorecard is summarized in the category of client profitability.
If the audit firm has succeeded in the perspective of the client, it is time to change the financial perspective of the balanced scorecard. First, auditing firms earn higher fees by achieving high-prestige, superior quality, and international-prestige ownership. Second, the reputable firm protects itself from the risk of deferred fees by attracting reputable clients. Third, the equipping of the audit firm with modern information technology, unique productivity, and economies of scale results in a significant reduction in the cost of services and a favorable profit margin for the organization. Finally, the firm's return on investment is a summary indicator of the financial success of the strategy.
 
 Discussion and Conclusion
The results showed that the strategy map obtained from the balanced scorecard model provides a systematic and effective roadmap to meet the challenges and basic needs of Iranian audit firms and it can protect and support the growth and development of the audit firm and profession of the country. 
 
Keywords: Audit Firms, Balanced Scorecard, Performance Evaluation, Strategy Map, Iranian Audit Profession.