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The purpose of this paper is to discuss critical success factors for the enormous development that internal auditing (IA) as “third line of defense” (IIA, 2016) and one of the strongest anti-fraud controls has reached within the past decades. Additionally, weaknesses of IA are identified and evaluated to allow further improvement.

The anti-fraud requirements stipulated in the “International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing” are confronted with empirical data about the current situation of the IA as anti-fraud control. The empirical data were extracted from global sources such as “Fraud Reports” (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners – ACFE) and “common body of knowledge (CBOK)” studies. The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA).

Over the years, IA has been continuously increasing its auditing quality and effectiveness with new analytical methods, specialized software tools and professional certifications. But all these efforts have hardly been reflected in statistical or research data, especially not in the listing of the top sources of fraud detection. The “ACFE-Fraud Report 2016” revealed that IA is now – for the first time ever – second among the initial detections of occupational frauds (financial statement fraud, corruption and asset misappropriation) worldwide. This positive trend of global anti-fraud auditing was probably no “one-hit wonder”, but a result of a lengthy process of professionalization of IA.

It is hoped that this paper will facilitate the discussion about the value that IA can add within an anti-fraud management system.

In order to stimulate the interest of company management in the business perspective of internal audit this paper aims to investigate the possibilities of using internal audit as a helpful managerial tool and describes the benefits of such use.

The benefits of IA as a managerial tool are investigated on a review of the relevant literature. Theoretically based findings are tested analytically using evidence from empirical research and empirically by a case study research.

Internal audit outcomes and benefits for management depend on the purpose of internal audit and on managers' support and expectations about it. The paper shows that in order to use internal audit as an effective managerial tool, internal audit has to be appropriately integrated within a strategic management system. The greatest benefits can be achieved by companies that are internally motivated to introduce the QMS which have a mature quality culture and QMS and their quality objectives linked to the business ones.

Discussing internal audit benefits from a managerial point of view is not a common approach in the professional literature on this topic. However, covering managers' needs by using quality tools is one of the most important issues companies should understand in order to make these tools attractive and beneficial. Showing the results of a real‐life case can convince managers from other companies that benefits of using IA as a managerial tool are tangible.

Internal audit purpose and results have been theoretically integrated within a broader managerial system of the company. This enables identification of possible business benefits resulting from appropriate implementation of internal audit itself and possible business benefits related to QMS and strategic management system of the company that can be affected through appropriate IA implementation.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the assurance and advisory role of internal audit (ADRIA) on organisational, human and technical proactive measures to enhance cybersecurity (CS).

The questionnaire was used to collect data for 97 internal auditors (IAu) from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. The authors used partial least squares (PLS) to test the hypotheses.

The results show a positive effect of the ADRIA on each of the organisational proactive measures, human proactive measures and technical proactive measures to enhance CS. The study also found a positive effect of the confirmatory role of IA on both human proactive measures and technical proactive measures to enhance CS. No effect of the confirmatory role of IA on the organisational proactive measures is found.

This study focused on only three proactive measures to enhance CS, and this study was limited to the opinions of IAu. In addition, the study was limited to using regression analysis according to the PLS method.

The results of this study show that managers need to consider the influential role of IA as a value-adding activity in reducing CS risks and activating proactive measures. Also, IAu must expand its capabilities, skills and knowledge in CS auditing to provide a bold view of cyber threats. At the same time, the institutions responsible for preparing IA standards should develop standards and guidelines that help IAu to play assurance and advisory roles.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind that deals with the impact of the assurance and ADRIA on proactive measures to enhance CS. In addition, the study determines the nature of the advisory role and the assurance role of IA to strengthen CS.

This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurs' internality of causal attributions and firm growth during an economic crisis. We propose a U-shaped relationship between the two variables, arguing that the highest-growth entrepreneurs are those with either the highest or lowest levels of internal attribution (IA) during such periods.

To test our hypothesis, we analyze a database of 804 interviews with entrepreneurs in Brazil during a period of economic stress. Due to the existence of endogeneity, we estimate a model of simultaneous equations in two stages.

We find evidence of a U-shaped relationship. This means that during economic stress, the fastest-growing entrepreneurs are those who rely more on their own effort (high IA) and those who attribute their success to the economic crisis (low IA).

Tailoring interventions based on attribution patterns and recognizing the U-shaped relationship ensures effective support during economic stress. Entrepreneurial support programs should align with internality levels, emphasizing external awareness or skill development accordingly. Policymakers should take attributions into account when promoting financial resilience. Entrepreneurs would benefit from awareness programs on attributions for reflective decision-making. Ecosystems should foster collaboration by recognizing diverse attributions, enhancing a collective understanding of entrepreneurial responses in crises.

Our results have important implications for understanding the role of entrepreneurs in economic crises. Our results are relevant because they challenge the usual claim that entrepreneurs with high IA are the ones who perform better in situations where external economic conditions are adverse.

In light of the recent changes in the internal audit (IA) landscape, the role of auditors has undergone a significant transformation. This paper aims to investigate the effects of applying Lean Six Sigma (LSS) techniques on the effectiveness and efficiency of IA.

The study used a quantitative approach, surveying Iranian internal auditors with a sample size of 384 participants. Data analysis involved confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The analyses demonstrate a significant association between LSS application and IA effectiveness and efficiency. In addition, an exploratory analysis indicates that the application of LSS techniques by less experienced internal auditors had a reverse effect on IA function quality as a component of IA competency. However, IA motivation factors, including education and position, did not mediate the impact of LSS on IA effectiveness and efficiency.

This study was conducted with Iranian internal auditors, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other countries. However, the primary academic implication of this research lies in its novel perspective on emphasizing the concept of continuous improvement in IA through the use of LSS techniques. By focusing on the need for internal auditors to add value to the business in new ways, this research contributes to the literature on IA quality.

This study has significant implications for the effective management of IA departments. By promoting the application of LSS techniques in IA, lean auditing is enhanced, and IA can create value by improving the quality of its functions. Moreover, IA regulators can benefit from this study as it emphasizes providing guidance and training on LSS techniques to enhance IA skills.

This research is pioneering in applying LSS methodology to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of internal auditing. It also considers the integration of lean thinking into current audit practices, making it unique and valuable in internal auditing research.

Extant expatriate literature largely adopts a global north/western focus and expatriate-centric approach in investigating spousal/partners’ motives for supporting expatriation. Contrastingly, this study focuses on the lived experiences of dual-career female partners from an emerging global south economy and a patriarchal society as it relates to motives for supporting a partner’s international assignment (IA) to a developed country.

This investigation adopts a hermeneutic interpretive phenomenology research design. Twelve career-oriented female partners from an emerging global south economy (Brazil) who supported a partner’s IA to a developed country (USA) participated in this study. The data included semi-structured interviews and field notes.

The study indicates that societal constraints, gendered career experiences and career and life stage reasons influenced women’s decision to engage in career opt out and/or interruption in support of their partners' IA. Further, patriarchal long-lasting structures and ideologies shaped women’s career experiences; women perceived IAs as a means of acquiring embodied and institutionalized cosmopolitan capital for themselves and their families in order to gain a better position in a transnational/globalized world.

Although the sample size of this study is appropriate for the methodological choice adopted, future studies should include more participants and address different socioeconomic, political and cultural contexts.

This study highlights dual-career female partners' lived experiences in an emerging global south economy and a patriarchal society as it relates to motives for supporting IAs.

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.

This study aims to explore the role of international ambidexterity (IA) in improving the innovation capability of emerging market multinationals. In particular, the main purpose of this research is to study the relationship amongst digitalisation, IA and innovation performance (IP) amongst multinational enterprises in China’s healthcare industry.

The data for this investigation were collected from 134 listed companies in China’s healthcare industry during the study period. This study tested the hypotheses by constructing a two-way fixed-effects model.

The results show that both the balance dimension and the combined dimension of IA have significant positive effects on IP. Digitalisation not only has a direct positive effect on IP but also positively moderates the positive correlation between IA and IP.

Previous studies have not captured the relationship between ambidexterity, digitalisation and IP, and this study helps to fill in the gap and examine these associations in China’s healthcare industry. The results of this study provide valuable insights for healthcare industry managers to understand the role of ambidexterity and digitalisation in innovation in the context of internationalisation.

How can we explain the unresponsiveness of Internal Audit (IA) amid signs that fraud is arising and spreading within an organization? Internal auditors are entrusted with the formal responsibility of sounding the alarm about the risk of fraud and organizational wrongdoing. However, internal auditors failed to respond as the cross-sell fraud at Wells Fargo’s Community Bank (CB) Division unfolded over more than a decade, growing into a massive, full-fledged scandal. We examine IA as a profession and explore how the interpretation of three classic tenets of auditing (scope, compliance and materiality) may enable organizational wrongdoing to fester unattended until it erupts into yet another scandal. We conclude with implications for the socialization and practice of internal auditors, emphasizing the need for reflexivity and moral judgment in the interpretation and application of tenets so deeply ingrained in the IA profession.

In this chapter, the term responsible management is explained with regard to how it relates to the Igbo apprenticeship system (IAS). Responsible management is ‘the assumption of a person’s responsibility for sustainability, stakeholder value and ethics’ (Laasch & Conaway, 2015, p. 25).

The introduction describes the origin of the Igbo tribe, their exposure to entrepreneurship and the birth of the IAS. It also describes the IAS as a business philosophy targeted towards economic equilibrium. The IAS’s three stages, namely talent identification, learning stage and settlement stage is then discussed followed by the two forms of the IAS: the ‘Igba boi’ (to assist with any task) and ‘Imu oru aka’ (to learn a skill) also known as ‘Imu ahia’ (to learn a trade).

The chapter further presents how IAS promotes sustainability, which involves the protection, creation and maintenance of social, environmental and economic business values. In addition, the various ways via which the IAS encourages the need for decisions in management to be morally desirable in both process and outcome for the benefit of all parties involved will be discussed. This chapter explores how IAS does not only practice responsible management but promotes the idea of responsible management in Nigeria and across the continent. It dissects the contributions of the IAS to the Igbo community, short-comings of the system and how it can be applied to effect positive change in other sectors.

While the IAS has been around for decades, research shows that very little work has been done to document it and written reports on it are sparse. Thus, for this chapter the author chose to interview real people who are products of the IAS. Findings demonstrate that the system has remained the same over the years. However, there are less people using the system today due to some negative social reasons. The people interviewed are quoted in this chapter where relevant but their real identities will not be used here thus, they will be referred to as Mr Ben and Mr James. It is also noteworthy that the author is an Igbo woman who has first-hand information on the Biafra war and how the Igbo people worked hard to recover from its effects.