Audit firms have recently adopted new descriptors, including “knowledge-intensive organizations,” “multinational professional services networks,” and “professional service firms” (Brock, 2006). These may not simply be new forms of branding but may indicate the changed nature of the firms and their services. The literature has to some extent captured this development, which it refers to as commercialization of the audit industry. Terms like “profitability,” “efficiency,” “market strategy,” “customer driver,” “firmalization,” “business process,”“financialization” and “marketization” (e.g., Sharma and Sidhu, 2001; Citron, 2003; Clow et al., 2009; Sweeney and McGarry, 2011; Alvehus and Spicer, 2012; Broberg et al., ۲۰۱۳; Broberg, 2013; Picard, 2016) are some of the labels used to describe audit firms’ development of a commercial orientation. Most studies that discuss this change have explored the impact of this commercial orientation on a number of outcomes, such as financial gain orientation and the efficiency of auditors and audit firms (e. g., Chesser et al., 1994; Sharma and Sidhu, 2001). Some studies have explored auditors’ unethical behavior and loss of independence (Humphrey and Moizer, 1990; Citron, 2003; Suddaby et al., 2009; Sori et al., 2010) and its ultimate effects on audit quality. Few studies, to our knowledge, have sought to explore the drivers of commercialization in the audit industry and those that have were primarily explorative and/or theoretical in nature. They tended to vaguely refer to the contextual (e.g., Brock, 2006; Carrington et al., 2011) and internal organizational (Broberg, 2013; Broberg et al., 2013) forces driving commercialization. This paper tries to contribute to this nascent stream of research by suggesting that auditors’ professional and organizational identities are driving commercialization in the audit industry (Settles, 2004; Johnson et al., 2006). These identities represent the forces of the internal and external environment, given that these individuals’ identities are constructed in interaction with, or even through the clash of, external and internal forces embodied by the profession and the organization (Pratt and Foreman, 2000; Lui et al., 2001).