Internal Audit Quality: Insights from Audit Committee Members, Senior Management, and Internal Auditors
通过对审计委员会成员、高级管理层、内部审计主管及外部审计合伙人等36人访谈，发现不同利益相关者评价内部审计质量时关注不同维度（投入、过程、产出、结果、背景），并构建了多利益相关者质量框架。
SUMMARY We investigate the concept of internal audit function (IAF) quality from a multi-stakeholder perspective through conducting 36 interviews with key IAF stakeholder groups: audit committee members, senior management, internal audit executives, and outsourced internal audit partners from the major accounting firms. We adapt established quality frameworks that suggest quality is a five-dimensional construct (including input, process, output, outcome, and contextual dimensions) to the internal audit context. We find that the various stakeholder groups focus on different quality dimensions in their evaluation of IAF quality. For example, the groups focus on the process dimension (internal audit executives), output dimension (audit committee members and internal audit partners), or outcome dimension (senior management and internal audit partners). We also find that the five dimensions comprise multiple indicators of IAF quality. We conduct six supplementary interviews with external audit partners to compare their insights on IAF quality to the focal IAF stakeholder groups. External auditors evaluate quality via the output dimension after an ex ante assessment focusing on the input dimension. Finally, we contribute to the IAF quality literature by developing a multi-stakeholder IAF quality framework.