Audit Committee in Iran: Barriers& challenges

In the past decade, In order to develop corporate governance in Iran, regulatory authorities such as the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran (CBI) and the Securities & Exchange Organization (SEO) have mandated establishment of Audit Committee(AC) in companies and credit institutions through issuing guidelines and requirements. Due to immaturity of AC in Iran, there are many obstacles and challenges in front of it and on the other hand, many aspects of AC, including the challenges of its implementation in Iran, are less explained. Many aspects of the AC in Iran, including the Audit Committee Effectiveness (ACE) and it's obstacles and barriers, have not been clarified yet. Also, limited areas of the Audit Committee’s Challenges (ACC) and barriers have been considered in previous research. In order to explain and describe the various aspects of ACC and it’ s improvement strategies, by using the qualitative approach and Grounded Theory(GT), AC multi-stakeholders were studied for the first time in Iran. In this regard, 34 Participants were interviewed. In addition, 31 papers and seminars which published in Iranian professional magazines that reflect the viewpoints of the above-mentioned stakeholders were also used and analyzed. The data were analyzed by using the open coding, axial coding & selective coding approach that are specific to the GT and major categories, categories, and subcategories (concepts) were extracted. The ACC model as an emerged theory was designed. The model incorporates multidimensional of ACC.