Purpose: Our purpose is to investigate if the documentation of an internalaudit department at banks reflects a shift towards more consultingactivities, and how this potential change in the internal audit doc-umentation can be explained. Background: Previous research indicates that internal audit has developed fromits traditional assurance activities to include more consulting ac-tivities such as risk management assistance and corporate govern-ance support. Some researches argue that this development canhave a negative impact on internal auditor independence. Howev-er, there is a lack of research in this area using documentation andcontent analysis of internal audit reports. Method: In this study, we have done qualitative content analysis of internaldocuments collected from the period 2004-2013. These docu-ments are analyzed using a coding scheme based on previous re-search. Conclusion: By qualitatively analysing the activities reported we find that thedocumentation reflects a shift, over time, towards more activitiesthat we classified as consulting. We argue that this can mainly beexplained by coercive and normative isomorphism; for example,regulatory pressures and influences from the Institute of InternalAuditors. We also argue that internal auditing might benefit froma more consistent view of the role.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-230197 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Lindh, Oskar, Bivesjö, Rikard |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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