Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explain how individual and strategic firm-level factors, through well-being as a mediating factor, make audit employees more prone to stay within the profession as well as to provide a more holistic picture of why they stay.  

Methodology: The study is built upon a positivistic standpoint with a deductive approach using a quantitative method where a survey was sent out to Swedish audit employees with at least three years of experience within the profession. The data collected were analyzed by a Harman single factor test, Spearman correlation matrix, and multiple regression analysis.  

Findings: The findings show that stress resilience, mentorship quality, career opportunities, and commercialization are positively related to the employee’s willingness to stay and are fully mediated through their subjective well-being. Further, the findings show that the individual expectation gap affects the willingness to stay directly and is only partly mediated through the individuals’ subjective well-being. 

Theoretical perspectives: The profession theory, person-organization fit theory, and motivational theory were applied to explain the variables and the willingness to stay.