M.Com. (Accounting) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Successful organisations have a well-defined mission and a strategy for accomplishing that mission. The organisation strategy involves the building of a competitive advantage in a defined market. Activities are oriented around this business strategy. When utilised effectively, technology is a powerful instrument for enhancing the organisation’s competitiveness. Technology management is the application of managerial techniques most suitable for ensuring that the technological factor is exploited for achievement of an organisation's goals. It is critical to correctly implement appropriate practices related to technology and innovation management at organisational level. Most organisations are technology intensive and deliver products or services. The research investigates, through the use of technology auditing, the present and future technology needs of the organisation. It also tried to establish the impact of technology auditing on the competitive advantage of the organisation. The research attempts to set a strategic context for the array of tools, technologies and standards emerging to support the organisation. The research analysed the potential of technology auditing to facilitate a dynamic scale of economy where the organisations take on the tasks of managing its technology. Basic theoretical principles of a technological audit were applied when the researcher conducted the technology audit. Because there is no organisation that is an exact replica of another, a technology audit must be custom made for the specific organisation where it is conducted. A micro business, MP Engineering, in the Port Elizabeth Metropole was chosen to conduct the technology audit at for the purpose of this research project. The research results confirmed the literature currently available.

This research was designed to investigate the relationship between audit risk and the conduct of the audit engagement in the specific context of an oil and gas audit. Because reserve estimates are in the financial reports of oil and gas entities (in the depreciation, depletion and amortization calculation, the limitation on capitalized costs for companies using the full-cost method, and the required supplementary disclosure for companies subject to Securities and Exchange Commission requirements) and because the reserve estimation process is considerably affected by numerous factors, there is a chance that a material error could be incorporated into the financial statement representations with which the auditor is associated. The objective of the research was to (1) identify conditions which are important in an assessment of audit risk in associating with reserve estimates, and (2) determine the impact of some of these conditions on the conduct of the audit.

Lean philosophy is based on the continuous quest to improve the organisation‟s processes by creating a culture and operating principles which eliminate all non value adding activities within organisation„s processes. Manufacturing firms consider the adoption of the Lean tools as basic requirements for achieving World Class operational excellence or Best Practice. For some time, lean has been used by the manufacturing organizations. Most organizations understand that lean will help them survive global competition and stay in business. The objective of this study is to investigate how lean manufacturing tools can be used to improve efficiency and enhance the embedding of a continuous improvement culture in the South African Revenue Service Enforcement Audit Port Elizabeth. The activities that took place in Enforcement Audit Port Elizabeth from September 2010 until 31 October 2011 were observed. During the study, an introductory presentation by the researcher was made to Regional Enforcement Management and staff in general, the presentation was to introduce the study highlighting different Lean tools. Thereafter the Port Elizabeth audit staff members were engaged formally, using surveys to assess their underlying mindset and behaviour as well as informally, using unstructured interviews to solicit more information on activities taking place and the reasoning behind certain actions. The results of the survey and observations are analysed and interpreted.

M.Com. (Business Management) / The sector of the economy in which service providers compete, has undergone much change during tho last two decades. Successful service providers followed specific tactics to ensure that the needs of clients were satisfied. Customer satisfaction became more important as competition increased. Although the internal audit department of ABSA has never had to face competition, this situation is rapidly changing. External audit firms are attempting to expand their businesses by providing the internal and the external audit functions to a company. ABSA's internal audit department is not only faced with the increase in competition but is also under pressure to improve its level of service to clients who no longer receive its service free of charge.

Between the years 1998 and 2002, the United States suffered a time in which several large companies engaged in fraudulent behavior which eroded investor confidence in the stock market and to some extent destabilized the economy. Audits, which were conducted to assess the validity and reliability of a company's financial statements, were not detecting the material misstatements in the statements. As a result, both the US Government and the accounting profession needed to come up with a way to prevent these immense frauds from occurring in the future. As a response to these large frauds, in 2002, the US Government passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) issued Statement on Auditing Standards No. 99(SAS No. 99) to improve investor confidence and the auditing function's ability to detect material frauds. The intent of this thesis was to look at the fraudulent factors associated with several recent corporate frauds and compare them to the standards set by SAS No. 99. Through the analysis conducted, this thesis looks at the relationships between pressures, opportunities, and rationalizations made during the act of fraud.

In establishing the impact of formal data management practices on systems and systems development auditing in the context of a corporate data base environment; the most significant aspects of a data base environment as well as the concept of data management were researched. It was established that organisations need to introduce a data management function to ensure the availability and integrity of data for the organisation. It was further established that an effective data management function can fulfil a key role in ensuring the integrity of the overall data base and as such it becomes an important general control on which the auditor can rely. The audit of information systems in a data base environment requires a more "holistic" audit approach and as a result the auditor has to expand the scope of the systems audit to include an evaluation of the overall data base environment. / Auditing / M. Com (Applied Accounting)

Very little accounting research exists which investigates specific decision tasks performed by audit committee members. More specifically, little research exists regarding the one decision task which appears to be a primary duty of all audit committees--the decision task of selecting and/or evaluating the external auditor. Since the auditor selection decision is basically an assessment of the tradeoffs between audit quality and audit fees and the determination of audit fees is straightforward, the current study focuses on the assessment of audit quality. The primary objectives of this research project were (1) to identify those factors which affect audit quality, (2) to investigate how those audit-quality factors correlate with audit committee chairpersons' assessments of audit quality, and (3) to determine whether audit committee chairpersons exhibit expert judgment in their audit-quality assessments. To meet these objectives of two-phase study was conducted. In the first phase of the study audit committee chairpersons were asked to rate the impact various factors have on the quality of auditing services. Those factors identified in the first phase to have the strongest impact on audit quality were then utilized in the second phase to develop audit-quality scenarios. The second phase of the study consisted of requesting each audit committee respondent to assess audit quality for 32 individual audit-quality scenarios. Regression analysis was employed in the second phase to represent the cognitive models of the respondents. The Judgmental Analysis (JAN) technique also was used in the second phase to cluster the decision makers into the various decision-making groups which exist. The results of this two-phase study provided data regarding the perceived impact of 15 audit-quality factors on audit quality and how the most important of these audit-quality factors correlate with audit committee chairpersons' audit-quality assessments. The main conclusions of the study were (1) team-specific factors have a stronger perceived impact on audit quality than do firm-specific factors, (2) audit team composition factors are perceived to be the most important determinants of audit quality, and (3) consensus is not obtained regarding audit-quality assessments.

Diplomová práce je zaměřena na současnou problematiku auditu účetní závěrky v českém prostředí. Cílem práce je, na základě získaných poznatků o auditorských postupech a komplexním procesu auditu, identifikovat významné změny, nové postupy a požadavky při provádění auditu po přijetí Mezinárodních auditorských standardů jako základních profesních předpisů auditorské praxe v České republice. Práci tvoří tři věcně ucelené části, v první části je pojednáno o původu auditorské profese, jejím vývoji v celosvětovém aspektu a následně také v České republice, pojetí a významu auditu, profesní legislativě a organizaci a profesních předpisech. Druhá část práce se zabývá detailními postupy auditorské společnosti při provádění auditu, ve kterých jsou aplikovány požadavky Mezinárodních auditorských standardů. V závěrečné části práce jsou uvedeny identifikované významné změny v přístupu a procedurách auditorské společnosti vyplývající z aplikace uvedených standardů.

Today, neither employees nor employers seem to take for granted that a person will stay with the same firm until retirement. Yet, keeping employees for longer periods is an impor-tant challenge for firms. One industry where retention is interesting is the auditing industry in Sweden, this because certain requirements are needed to become an auditor. Firstly, the employee needs to have a Swedish university degree, including specific courses within au-diting/accounting. Furthermore, the person needs practical experience for a specific period of time. Due to these statements the challenge of retaining and motivating valuable em-ployees is crucial for the auditing firms, which is why we have chosen to do a case study at Auditing Company X to see how they work with employee retention. We have compared the findings to our chosen theory, which consist of four categories: the hiring process, in-ternal labor market and career, motivation and performance, and finally culture and leader-ship. These four categories are initially based on Leigh Branham‟s book: „Keeping the people who keep you in business: 24 ways to hang on to your most valuable talent‟ (Bran-ham, 2001). In our conducted case study, at Auditing Company X, we have been able to conclude that the firm‟s retention practices are to a great extend in line with the theoretical framework. There are some areas that need further attention from the company, such as an individua-lized reward system and communication between managers and employees. Even though there are some parts to work on the most important aspects of retention, such as having a holistic and long-term orientation, Auditing Company X seems to have incorporated this into their practices successfully.