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

Yahel Ma’ayan; Abraham Carmeli

doi:10.1007/s10551-015-2561-0

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

Yahel Ma’ayan, Abraham Carmeli

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

43 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	347-363
Number of pages	17
Journal	Journal of Business Ethics
Volume	137
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2561-0
State	Published - 1 Aug 2016
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

Funding

We wish to thank the associate editor and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Esther Singer for her editorial comments. We also thank Dr. Even-Zohar for his help with the statisitical analysis. The second author acknowledges the financial support of the Henry Crown Institute of Business Research in Israel at the Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University.

Funders	Funder number
Henry Crown Institute of Business Research in Israel
Tel Aviv University

Keywords

Auditor–auditee exchange
Internal audit
Learning from audits
Performance improvement
Work units

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10.1007/s10551-015-2561-0

Cite this

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abstract = "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{\textquoteright}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.",

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

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

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