Effects of influence of audit committee and senior managers over the internal auditors and type of internal control deficiency on internal auditors

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Accounting Department, Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

2 University of Tabriz

3 Shahid Beheshti University

4 University of tabriz

10.22051/jera.2025.48719.3314

Abstract

Internal auditors are considered one of the essential control elements for today's organizations, so an internal audit unit is an important tool for the manager to evaluate internal controls and determine the necessary strategies to improve performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of management or audit committees and the nature of internal control weaknesses on internal auditors' assessment of internal control weaknesses. This research used an experimental method with a 2x2 intergroup factorial design. The manipulated independent variables include audit committee influence and management influence on internal audit performance and the nature of internal control weakness (pervasive weakness or process-specific weakness). The statistical sample of the research consists of 123 auditors working in the internal audit unit of companies in 1403, who were selected by the available sampling method. Data analysis and hypothesis testing have been done using SPSS software, variance analysis test, and mean comparison. The results of variance analysis related to internal auditors' evaluation variable showed that internal auditors are more likely to evaluate the weakness of internal controls associated with a specific process as an important weakness compared to the overall weakness of internal controls. In addition, in line with the theory of motivational reasoning, the influence of the audit committee or management does not affect the evaluation of the pervasive weakness of internal controls by internal auditors, so internal auditors avoid reporting pervasive weaknesses to satisfy the managers and the audit committee and ignore this internal control despite It is considered as effective control.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Empirical Research in Accounting

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 06 April 2025

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 26 October 2024
  • Revise Date: 08 March 2025
  • Accept Date: 06 April 2025

Share

How to cite

Statistics