Author:
Kotb Amr,Sangster Alan,Henderson David
Abstract
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of technological change on the internal audit practices and skills requirements for internal auditors in an e-business environment.
Design/methodology/approach
– Generalist internal auditors and specialist information technology (IT) internal auditors were surveyed online in ten countries, including the USA and the UK which, together, provided the majority of responses.
Findings
– The results suggest a need for advanced IT-audit techniques in conducting the internal audit function, thereby increasing IT audit skill demands on generalist internal auditors. However, the results show a low confidence among internal auditors about their IT training and a continuing reliance upon IT audit specialists, rather than their own training/retraining.
Research limitations/implications
– The responses obtained in this study provide insight into both the status quo of the internal audit function, and to the changes that are needed to prepare generalist internal auditors for work in an e-business environment and, while the scale of the study limits the extent to which the findings may be generalized, they are consistent with the literature concerning the changing business environment and with the literature on resistance to change, suggesting that the issues revealed should be of concern.
Practical implications
– The results reported in this paper are useful to internal auditing educators and regulators in their consideration of the skills needed by generalist internal auditors in e-business environment.
Originality/value
– This study sheds light on a significantly growing area which remains relatively unexplored in the auditing-related literature, e-business audit. The study provides empirical evidence on challenges facing internal auditors in an e-business environment, thereby serving as a wake-up call, to both internal auditors and the professional bodies representing them, to defend their jurisdictional space against rival professional groups.
Reference64 articles.
1. Abdolmohammadi, M.
and
Boss, S.
(2010), “Factors associated with IT audits by the internal audit function”, International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 140-151.
2. Abu-Musa, A.
(2008), “Information technology and its implications for internal auditing: an empirical study on Saudi organizations”, Managerial Auditing Journal, Vol. 23 No. 5, pp. 438-466.
3. ACL
(2001), “Auditing e-business: challenges and opportunities”, E-Commerce White Paper, available at: http://raw.rutgers.edu/docs/wcars/4wcars/bouwer.pdf (accessed 13 July 2012).
4. Alles, M.
,
Kogan, A.
and
Vasarhelyi, M.
(2004), “The law of unintended consequences? Assessing the costs, benefits, and outcomes of the sarbanes-oxley act”, Information Systems Control Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 17-21.
5. American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA)
(1999), Study Group on Continuous Auditing, Continuous Auditing, AICPA, New York, NY.
Cited by
6 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献