Correlates of External Quality Assessment and Improvement Programs in Internal Auditing: A Study of 68 Countries

ABSTRACT We use survey responses from 1,053 chief audit executives (CAEs) of public companies located in 68 countries to investigate the theoretical correlates of the use of external quality assessment and improvement programs (ExternalQAIP) for the Internal Audit Function (IAF). Our test variables are (1) internal quality assessment and improvement programs (InternalQAIP) and its related components and IAF performance measures, (2) chief audit executive competence, (3) audit committee involvement with the internal audit, (4) IAF age, (5) IAF outsourcing status (in-house or outsourced), and (6) the nature of the IAF's work (work performed by IAF). We find support for our hypothesized associations between various measures of InternalQAIP and ExternalQAIP. We also find significant and positive results for associations between audit committee involvement and IAF age and ExternalQAIP. However, we do not find significant results for in-house or outsourcing of internal audit activities, CAE competence, or control variables. Our results should be of interest to management, CAEs, corporate boards, regulators, and external auditors. Data Availability: Please contact The Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation (IIARF) that owns the CBOK (2010) database used in this study.

Correlates of Co-Sourcing/Outsourcing of Internal Audit Activities

SUMMARY: I use responses from 1,059 chief audit executives (CAEs) of organizations located in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.K./Ireland, and the U.S. to investigate several correlates of co-sourcing and/or outsourcing (hereafter, simply “outsourcing”) of internal audit activities. An important finding of the study is that audit committee involvement is positively and significantly associated with outsourcing of internal audit activities. Interactions of audit committee involvement with organization size and location generally indicate that medium and large international/multinational organizations with audit committee involvement outsource more than medium and large local/national organizations with no audit committee involvement. Analysis of control variables produces significance for an inverse relationship between outsourcing and value-added activities of the internal audit function, and for positive relationships between outsourcing and missing skill set and audit staff vacancies. Other control variables, such as CAE age, college degree (graduate/undergraduate), major (accounting versus others), internal audit certification, and regular meetings with the audit committee do not show significant associations with outsourcing. Also, country of residence (U.S. versus other Anglo-culture countries) is not significant, but for-profit organizations outsource significantly more of their internal audit activities than not-for-profit/governmental organizations. Data Availability: Please contact the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation, which owns the CBOK (2010) database used in this study.