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Leadership educators seek to understand how they can better develop leadership among their students through formal and informal course experiences. The purpose of this study was to understand how undergraduate students perceive reasons for changes in their leadership practices, after completing a personal leadership education course. The course focused on the five exemplary practices of college students. As part of the course, students completed the Student Leadership Practices Inventory (S-LPI) as a pre and post assessment. A qualitative content analysis of 107 undergraduate student reflections from multiple sections of a leadership course was conducted to examine students’ perceptions of what influenced their change in scores on the S-LPI assessment. Students perceived that the curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities of the course (including the high-impact service-learning project) affected their change in score for the leadership behavior(s) they intended to focus on throughout the semester. Students whose scores did not increase for the leadership behavior they chose to focus on still experienced leadership growth and development but attributed their growth to different items: their growth was in a different leadership behavior than intended or they developed a greater understanding of the five practices which affected their self-assessed score.

This exploratory, qualitative, descriptive study examined undergraduate student perspectives of pedagogy used in an undergraduate leadership elective course to describe how students view the effectiveness and impact of pedagogies used in the course. Undergraduate students (n = 28) reflected on the effectiveness of the pedagogies and the learning environment created by the pedagogies used in the undergraduate leadership course elective. Student reflections at the end of the semester revealed student perspectives on the effectiveness of the pedagogies and were grouped into three themes: contribution to overall effectiveness, openness to different perspectives, and learning from peers. Two themes emerged for students’ perceptions of the learning environment including overcoming challenges with discussion and class logistics. This study lends support for discussion as a pedagogy used by leadership instructors which can be effective for learning leadership as perceived by undergraduate students.

The technical feasibility of using Benford's law to assist internal auditors in reviewing the integrity of high-volume data sets is analysed. This study explores whether Benford's distribution applies to the set of numbers represented by the quantity of records (size) that comprise the different tables that make up a state-owned enterprise's (SOE) enterprise resource planning (ERP) relational database. The use of Benford's law streamlines the search for possible abnormalities within the ERP system's data set, increasing the ability of the internal audit functions (IAFs) to detect anomalies within the database. In the SOEs of emerging economies, where groups compete for power and resources, internal auditors are better off employing analytical tests to discharge their duties without getting involved in power struggles.

Records of eight databases of an SOE in Argentina are used to analyse the number of records of each table in periods of three to 12 years. The case develops step-by-step Benford's law application to test each ERP module records using Chi-squared (χ²) and mean absolute deviation (MAD) goodness-of-fit tests.

Benford's law is an adequate tool for performing integrity tests of high-volume databases. A minimum of 350 tables within each database are required for the MAD test to be effective; this threshold is higher than the 67 reported by earlier researches. Robust results are obtained for the complete ERP system and for large modules; modules with less than 350 tables show low conformity with Benford's law.

This study is not about detecting fraud; it aims to help internal auditors red flag databases that will need further attention, making the most out of available limited resources in SOEs. The contribution is a simple, cheap and useful quantitative tool that can be employed by internal auditors in emerging economies to perform the first scan of the data contained in relational databases.

This paper provides a tool to test whether large amounts of data behave as expected, and if not, they can be pinpointed for future investigation. It offers tests and explanations on the tool's application so that internal auditors of SOEs in emerging economies can use it, particularly those that face divergent expectations from antagonist powerful interest groups.

This study demonstrates that even in the context of limited information technology tools available for internal auditors, there are simple and inexpensive tests to review the integrity of high-volume databases. It also extends the literature on high-volume database integrity tests and our knowledge of the IAF in Civil law countries, particularly emerging economies in Latin America.

While the three lines model (TLM) provides an organizational structure to execute risk and control duties, research and practice show limitations in the model's implementation. These limitations result in governance issues. Such issues, together with control weaknesses, could be addressed by leveraging properties of distribution, transparency, and immutability of blockchain technology. To this end, in this paper the authors propose a conceptual control framework based on blockchain technology to augment control practice.

The design of the resulting blockchain-based control framework (BBCF) and its prototype, based on the design science research methodology (DSRM), is presented and discussed in terms of the potential impact in the context of the identified problems within the TLM.

One potential outcome of BBCF could be to redefine the scope and boundaries of some of the activities in audit and control practices from a more static to a more dynamic and prospective role. In a larger context of improving governance practices, the BBCF could set the path for a more inclusive and participatory interaction between the different governance actors of an organization.

However, this assumes that blockchain is more widely adopted despite its complexity and rigidity.

BBCF covering both a conceptual model design and a reference implementation provides an innovation in audit and control. BBCF could include all relevant stakeholders who have an interest in corporate governance and control activities, including the regulators.

The contribution intends to serve both as a starting point for discussing the evolution of audit and control practice based on blockchain technology, as well as an initial actionable prototype for experimentation and further development.

This paper aims to examine the effects of the 2014 European regulatory reform on auditors’ activity, the audit outcome and the audit market, with a focus on the Spanish market.

The research is based on in-depth, semistructured interviews with partners of the main audit firms operating in the Spanish market. This qualitative approach provides a precise identification of the cause-effect relationships of the new measures introduced by the European audit regulation.

The findings indicate that, based on auditors’ opinions, the costs of the main regulatory changes outweigh the benefits. The European Union (EU) Audit Regulation imposes more demanding provisions, such as an extended auditor’s report, mandatory audit firm rotation, more banned nonaudit services and stricter quality controls, resulting in substantial side effects on audit activity and the audit market. This could undermine the objective of enhancing the quality of audit services.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze the effect of the 2014 EU regulatory reform on audit activity, audit market and audit outcome based on auditors’ perceptions. The findings may be of interest to academics, professionals and regulators alike, as they offer valuable insights for assessing the effectiveness of the new audit provisions. Additionally, the qualitative methodology used facilitates a causal analysis of the key elements introduced by the regulations, potentially paving the way for future research avenues.

This study aims to examine how the legitimacy of internal auditing is reconstructed during enterprise resource planning (ERP)-driven technological change.

The study is based on the comparative analysis of internal auditing and its transformation due to ERP implementations at two case firms operating in the food sector in Egypt – one a major Egyptian multinational corporation (MNC) and the other a major domestic company (DC).

Internal auditors (IAs) at MNC saw ERP implementation as an opportunity to reconstruct the legitimacy of internal auditing work by engaging and partnering with actors involved with the ERP change. In doing so, the IAs acquired system certifications and provided line functions and external auditors with data-driven business insights. The “practical coping mechanism” adopted by the IAs led to the acceptance (and legitimacy) of their work. In contrast, IAs at DC adopted a purposeful strategy of disengaging, blaming and rejecting since they were skeptical of the top management team's (TMT's) sincerity. The “disinterestedness” led to the loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the stakeholders.

The article offers two contributions. First, it extends the literature by highlighting a spectrum of behavior displayed by IAs (coping with impending issues vs strategic purposefulness) during ERP-driven technological change. Second, the article contributes to the literature on legitimacy by highlighting four intertwined micro-processes – participating, socializing, learning and role-forging – that contribute to reconstructing the legitimacy of internal auditing.