Journal Article

Internal Audits as a Source of Ethical Behavior, Efficiency, and Effectiveness in Work Units

Carmeli, Abraham, Ma'ayan, Yahel

2016

Overview

This study of internal auditors and auditees, who engage in both financial and operational internal audits in Israel, extends theory and research on internal audits in organizational units. It develops and tests a model that examines the role of top management and internal auditors in facilitating learning from internal audits and driving perceived performance improvement. We argue that support from the top management for the internal audit as well as the auditor's capacity (skills, resources, and behaviors) facilitate learning from audits and help audited units to improve ethicality, efficiency, and effectiveness in organizations. The results of time-lagged survey data provide general support for the hypothesized indirect relationships between auditor capacity, auditor-auditee relational exchanges, learning from audits, and three different perceived performance measures: ethical behavior, efficiency, and effectiveness. We discuss the implications for research on internal audits, proactive learning, ethics, and performance improvement of organizational units in the public sector.

• Publisher: Springer,Springer Netherlands,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Audit quality / Auditing / Audits / Behavior / Business and Management / Business audits / Business Ethics / Continuous audits / Education / Educational improvement / Effectiveness / Efficiency / Ethical accountability / Ethical behavior / Ethical conduct / Ethical instruction / Ethics / Financial audits / Fraud / Internal auditing / Internal auditors / Internal audits / Israel / Learning / Management / Management audits / Organization theory / Organizational effectiveness / Organizational learning / Organizational research / Philosophy / Psychological safety / Public sector / Quality of Life Research / Research ethics / Risk management / Skills / Studies / Top management / Work units