Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 1993. / Title from title page screen, viewed March 10, 2006. Dissertation Committee: John R. McCarthy (chair), Anthony L. Ostrosky, David L. Tucker, Jeffrey Hecht, Rodney P. Riegle. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-112) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Corporate scandals such as Enron, WorldCom and Parmalat, have focused recent governance efforts in the domain of financial reporting due to fraudulent and/or erroneous accounting practices. In addition, the ineffectiveness of the current system of controls has been highlighted, including that some directors have been weak and ineffective monitors of managers. This board of director ‘weakness’ has called for additional mechanisms for monitoring and controlling of management, focusing on financial reporting. This problem intensifies in that today companies function in real-time, and decisions are based on available realtime financial information. However, the assurances provided by traditional auditing take place months after the transactions have occurred and therefore, a trust problem arises because information is not verified in real-time. Consequently, the errors and fraud concealed within the financial information is not discovered until months later. To address this trust problem a conceptual causal model is proposed in this study based on the principles of systems theory. The emergent property of the causal model is increased trust and control. This study establishes that mutual assurances assist in building trust and that information security assists in safeguarding trust. Subsequently, in order to have a positive relationship between the company directors and various stakeholders, uncertainty needs to be contained, and the level of trust needs to surpass the perceived risks. The study concludes that assurances need to be provided in real-time to restore stakeholder confidence and trust in the domain of financial reporting. In order to provide assurances in real-time, continuous auditing is required to verify the integrity of financial information when it becomes available, and not months later. A continuous auditing process has its foundations grounded in information technology and attends to the challenges in real-time by addressing the standardisation of data to enable effective analysis, the validation of the accuracy of the data and the reliability of the system.

The solution to South Africa’s growing skills crisis subsists in its ability to transform into a thriving knowledge economy. In a globalised world where it has become easy for skills to transcend borders, skills development and more importantly, skills retention strategies, ought to be an integral part of an organisation’s strategic framework in particular, and the country’s skills development strategy in general. Learnerships, viewed as a panacea for the skills crisis, is a legislated skills development initiative which falls under the Skills Development Act. This in turn resides within the Public Human Resource Management domain. A learnership is a vocationally-based training programme which is quality assured by the Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) and has as its foundation experiential learning principles. To this end, the Institute of Internal Auditors administers the Internal Audit Technician (IAT) learnership. Internal audit is deemed a scarce skill, and the IAT is aimed at increasing the level of internal audit skills whilst filling the skills gap. Presently the IAT is in greater demand within the public sector as opposed to the private sector. This research was based on completed public sector IAT programmes and some key findings included a clear and disconcerting gap in consultation and communication between the supervisor and manager of the learner. Another was that the majority of learners had benefitted vastly from the communication module and recorded visible improvements in the way they communicated. Key recommendations include greater supervisory and management commitment towards the learnership programme and that all public sector internal auditors report directly to the Auditor-General. This will allow for internal auditors to conduct internal audits free of political interference and the concomitant fear from any form of reprisal, especially where corruption is involved. / Thesis (MPA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.

Fraud is an inevitable cost of doing business. Organisations are responding to the pervasiveness of fraud by employing increased fraud risk management strategies. Internal audit is the most effective corporate control available to management to address the threat of fraud. Internal audit as an effective corporate control is studied in the context of the mandatory obligation imposed by The Institute of Internal Auditors’ 2009 International Professional Practices Framework (hereafter, IPPF). This mandatory obligation requires the internal audit function to ‘evaluate the potential for the occurrence of fraud and [to evaluate] how the organisation manages fraud risk’ (IPPF performance standard 2120.A2 Risk Management). At the individual auditor level, the internal auditor is required to ‘possess the knowledge, skills, and other competencies to perform their individual responsibilities’ (IPPF attribute standard 1210 Proficiency). These standards have the potential to increase expectations on the internal audit profession to prevent and detect the threat of fraud. This expectations gap raises two research questions: (1) What are the determinants of auditors’ fraud detection capabilities? and (2) What constitutes expert performance in the fraud detection task? This thesis aims to address these research questions through the performance of two studies. Study 1 used interviews to investigate the determinants of fraud detection capabilities of both the external auditor and internal auditor. Study 2 drew on the results from Study 1 and was an online survey of Australian internal audit practitioners. Study 1 confirmed that the determinants of auditor expert performance in other audit tasks established in literature, namely, certification, continuous learning, practical experience, analytical reasoning, data analysis skills, communication skills, are also applicable to the fraud detection task. Further, the fraud detection task requires key, unique capabilities because fraud has an inherent element of deception and concealment by fraud perpetrators. The determinants of auditor expert performance unique to the fraud detection task include mentoring, technical skills, and the ability to work in a team. An additional finding is the identification of an effective control environment as a determinant related to the environment where the auditor performs audit work. The resulting model of auditor expert performance in fraud detection depicts the relationship of these determinants (independent variables) with expert performance in fraud detection (the dependent variable). The inclusion of new determinants and the revision of the definitions of determinants established in literature provided the solution to Research Question 1. Subsequently, auditor expert performance in fraud detection was defined based on the resulting combination of determinants. This was the solution to Research Question 2. Study 2 was an online survey with new scales of measurement that were developed from Study 1 interview data. Expert studies and pilot studies were conducted to validate these new scales of measurement. The online survey captured the perceptions of Australian internal audit practitioners about the determinants identified in Study 1. The survey data was applied to the model of auditor expert performance in fraud detection. The main findings of this study are: (1) the assessment of the effectiveness of the strategies to develop auditors’ knowledge of fraud and fraud detection - mentoring, practical experience, continuous learning, and certification; (2) the assessment of the effectiveness of each determinant in contributing towards auditor expert performance in fraud detection. The findings of this thesis supported the expectation that the uniqueness of the fraud detection task impacted on the composition of auditors’ fraud detection capabilities and subsequently, the composition and definition of auditor expert performance in fraud detection. The participation of practitioners – internal auditors, external auditors, and fraud investigators - and academics in the data collection and validation processes provided valuable insight into the research design and provided helpful data for the two studies. The main contribution of this thesis is the extension of Bonner and Lewis’ (1990) model of auditor expert performance to the fraud detection task. Next, the resulting model of auditor expert performance in fraud detection provides the internal audit profession, organisations, and the individual internal auditor with an understanding of the factors that impact on the individual internal auditor’s fraud detection capabilities. Therefore, this practical understanding of internal auditors’ fraud detection capabilities has the potential to: (1) contribute to the development and improvement of an organisation’s fraud risk management strategy; (2) inform the policy debate regarding the promulgation of professional and mandatory standards; and (3) contribute to auditing practice and the audit profession through the identification of strategies to educate the audit profession about fraud detection. The final contribution is the research design where the qualitative study (Study 1) contributed to the development of the survey instrument and provided insights into the results of the structural mode (Study 2).

The objective of this research report was to determine which internal controls are perceived, by internal auditors, to be contributing to the effectiveness of an internal control structure. The Committee for Sponsoring Organisations (COSO) integrated internal control framework was used as a basis for the questionnaire construction and respondents were asked to rate the perceived control effectiveness of each of the components of internal control. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the basic meaning of the data. The questionnaire was completed by following a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) which was sent to two internal auditors in audit firms. Thirty one responses were obtained; all the respondents have experience in the evaluation and assessment of internal control systems. This research showed that control elements as outlined in COSOs integrated internal control framework, if implemented, could contribute to the effectiveness of the internal control system.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Commerce in Accounting / Not only has IT become more prominent in the business environment, but it has also expanded the available tools at the auditors’ disposal. These tools are more commonly known as CAATs. The implications of CAATs have not been addressed adequately in the academic environment. As a result, this leads to the purpose of this research report: to illustrate the implications of introducing CAATs in the audit process on the five key elements of an assurance engagement. A case study methodology has been selected to explore this audit approach in great detail by focusing on one client and its audit firm. This methodology has been chosen to illustrate the context of a computerised audit and its specific consequences over a period of time. As a result, this study has managed to demonstrate the benefits from introducing CAATs throughout each key area of the audit process. In order to achieve these benefits, the auditor needs to consider several matters to ensure an efficient IT-based audit is realised. / PH2020

Thesis (M.Com.(Internal auditing))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

This study uses the principal-agent framework to investigate the trade-off between the benefits of internal control stemming from a reduction of the losses from inappropriate employee actions and the cost of implementing it brought about by the possibility of collusion that it creates. It is shown that, when the agents find it relatively easy to collude, implementing internal control reduces agency welfare, defined as the sum of expected payments accruing to the principal and the agents, even as, with positive transaction costs of collusion, it improves productive efficiency, defined as the expected output. As a result, the principal, under certain conditions, finds it in her best interest to use internal control as a threat instead of implementing it. When this is the case, the principal sometimes prefers to decrease the accuracy of the accounting information system. The analysis of the agents' side contracting indicates that, even if the principal can prevent explicit collusion, for some values of parameters the possibility of tacit collusion still results in a loss. The study also investigates the effect of the choice of organizational form on the value of internal control. The analysis of two different versions of the model demonstrates that, for a wide range of parameters, creating a hierarchical structure reduces, albeit does not eliminate, the loss from collusion -- i.e., internal control and hierarchical delegation are complementary instruments of organizational design. It is also shown that, when one agent is ex ante more likely to be efficient than the other, in most cases the principal optimally appoints to the supervisory position the one who is less likely to be efficient. As a result, the supervisor, in expectation, exerts a lower effort level than the subordinate and collects higher salary. / text

The East Asian financial crisis and the failures of Enron and Worldcom in the United States of America have put corporate governance and risk management in the forefront of the corporate scenes. McKinsey's global investor opinion survey on corporate governance carried out in 2000 indicated that majority of investors were prepared to pay a premium for companies exhibiting high governance standards. Central to corporate governance is risk management as can be seen from the various codes on corporate governance, namely, Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance and the United Kingdom's Combined Code on Corporate Governance. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2005.