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The purpose of this paper is to develop an auditing framework which would assist the organizations that experience difficulties with the current ISO 9001 quality audits to achieve their planned objectives with regard to their auditing of conformance, performance, risk management (RM) and improvement collectively.

A literature review was conducted to develop a conceptual audit framework (CAF). Subsequently, a preliminary audit framework (PAF) was developed. It includes the questions that are based on the CAF and connected with the complaints of the concerned organization. This PAF was thoroughly tested and validated by performing 11 internal audits, 2 management reviews (MR) and 3 workshops.

Applying this PAF indicated that in order to help organizations to audit their performance, RM and improvement collectively, they need to: change their audit approach from ISO elements to ISO principles, integrate the tools that are related to ISO 9001 Principles within the audit’s phases, perform pre-audits in the form of self-auditing, induce auditors to learn all tools to determine the ideal tools for particular situation, audit each department in combination with its internal customer, involve their auditors in problem solving, perform MR prior to closing the audit and analyze the results of audits with their causes by using one of the appropriate qualitative methods, such as analysis by themes. Finally, an auditing framework was developed to meet these needs. It includes the PAF’s questions that led to the discovery of chronic and systematic audit findings. It enhances any ISO 9001 Quality Auditing Questionnaires Checklist.

This study enhances the role of auditors to include risk identification, problem solving and data analysis by development of an auditing framework that is based on ISO 9001 Principles rather than clauses.

The food and beverage industry, particularly the agro‐processing and packaging industry, plays a critical role in the economies of Latin America and Caribbean countries. To remain competitive and to increase competitiveness, companies operating in this industry must achieve operational efficiency – where one contributing factor would be the efficient management of their work‐in‐progress (WIP) inventories.

Constructs from related manufacturing management research areas such as manufacturing strategy and coordination theory, are incorporated into a conceptual framework to examine the reasons WIP are needed in food plants. The framework is used to inform the development of an audit tool, which is applied in a case study.

An audit tool is proposed, which can be used by practitioners to review the structural and infrastructural decisions that impact WIP.

The audit tool is applied in one case study. Further application of the tool will test its overall comprehensiveness.

The audit tool can be used as part of a structured decision making process.

The paper brings together a number of constructs to create an audit tool that can be used in both greenfield and existing plants in the food industry.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual auditing framework (CAF), which can help the organizations that experience difficulties with current ISO 9001 auditing to achieve their desired benefits with regard to the auditing of conformance, performance, risk management and improvement collectively.

A literature review was undertaken to identify the audit limitations and the program strategies that were reported in literature to overcome these limitations. The relevant audit standard (ISO 9001:2015) and guidelines (ISO 19011:2011 and ISO 19011:2018) have also been reviewed to determine the gap in relation to this purpose.

Most of the previous suggestions to overcome the difficulties of the current ISO 9001 auditing were to focus on processes in addition to ISO 9001 clauses and to apply the two principles of “Process Approach” and “Improvement” of ISO 9001, by having the manner of integration of their risk-based thinking concept and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approaches, respectively, within audit. However, this integration also has limitations such as the desire for implementing risk management program and the necessity for applying LSS approach. Therefore, a CAF was developed to enhance the ISO 9001 quality audit. It suggests the integration of 12 management tools that are connected to the seven principles of ISO 9001:2015 severally and collectively. The selected tools ought to be linked to the audit limitations that have been previously reported in the literature, and connected with the complaints of the organizations that experience difficulties with current ISO 9001 auditing. Auditing of conformance/performance, risk management and improvement in combination can be assured by upgrading, testing and validating this CAF.

Utilizing the ISO 9001 quality audit in a way that helps organizations to audit performance, risk management and improvement in combination by changing the auditing approach from ISO 9001 elements to ISO 9001 principles and by learning from the experience of business excellence models implementers in development of the Performance measurement frameworks and in converting the concepts and principles into practice.

This study conducts a systematic review using 452 academic and industry articles from an initial set of 60,899 records obtained by 3 databases from 2012 to 2020. The authors compare and contrast blockchains with existing legacy systems. The authors identify existing regulation, accounting standards, guidelines and potential amendments in under-explored areas such as taxation, accounting treatment of crypto-assets/liabilities and detailed auditing procedures. The study aims to highlight the trends, differences and gaps between academic and industry literature. The authors provide a behavioral, social, cultural, organizational, regulatory, ethical, accountability and managerial perspectives of blockchain adoption in accounting. Finally, the study develops two adoption frameworks.

The authors' study follows (Moher et al., 2009) and (Briner and Denyer, 2012) methodology to conduct the systematic review and the steps are mentioned below. The authors construct a final sample of 452 from a preliminary search of three multi-disciplinary databases from 2012 to 2020. First, the authors motivate the review and formulate the research questions. Second, the authors aggregate relevant literature from both industry and academia and implement quality assessments. Third, the authors analyze the literature and construct the final sample of articles. Fourth, the authors conducted textual analysis, keyword frequencies and identify gaps, trends and similarities between academic and industry literature and develop the authors' frameworks

The authors identify 3 (ABDC, B and A* ranked) journals as publishing top article numbers with the highest article count for 2017 with 96 articles in academia and 2019 for the industry with 21 articles. Second-highest publications for academia occur in 2018 with 77 followed by, whereas in the industry, publications occur in the year 2016 with 16 articles. Two co-authors appear most popular with 103 articles. Word clouds, a mind map and article theme counts are used to identify nine key research clusters: data management, financial applications, sustainability, accounting and auditing, business and industrial, education, governance, privacy/security and disruptive technology.

Systematic reviews can have selection biases mainly due to search and selection criteria distortions when constructing the final sample of articles. The authors address selection bias by refining our search keyword combinations by using different permutations and using keywords from articles already collected. The authors employ three databases and review the reference list of articles collected to add more articles that may have been missed into our sample. In addition, to avoid inconsistent coding of domains/themes and interpretations, the authors carefully review our domain identifications and all our analysis twice independently using two research assistants to obtain the same conclusions.

The authors' unique contributions include reviewing additional papers, differentiating between industry, academic articles, common trends and gaps in much scattered prior literature. The authors identify existing accounting standards, guidelines, limitations and possible amendments required in future for blockchain adoption in accounting in taxation, accounting treatment of crypto-assets/liabilities and detailed audit procedures. Blockchains are compared with legacy accounting technologies and two frameworks for adoption developed. The authors' results could impact the understanding of existing regulation, accounting standards, future amendments, areas requiring clarity and future collaborative research between academia and industry across multi-disciplines. Practical implications to academics, professional bodies, regulators and industry practitioners exist.

The authors' study identifies significant implications on organizations, environment, culture and society in general. The authors identify that social engagement projects may be easily initiated and implemented with decentralized accounting information systems. Transparency and efficiency would change organization culture, ways accountants and even employees interact with each other and community. Anonymity in blockchains can be used for criminal activities. Coding of negative social dynamics to smart contracts may persist. Transparency of personally identifiable information may place individuals at risk. Regulation and standards would need to identify equity, ethics in blockchains which notwithstanding energy consumption, and could enable environmental protection increasing societal sustainability.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that compares academic and industry literature of 452 articles to identify gaps and similarities from 2012 to 2020 using three multi-disciplinary databases. The authors' study is the first study to in detail existing accounting standards, unclear areas, future amendments for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) standards on taxation, financial reporting and all aspects of auditing procedures. The authors further categorize prior literature into these key areas and develop two frameworks (DAERPS and DAIS) that are linked to our review results and prior literature. The authors identify the impact of blockchain adoption on key stakeholders, regulation, society, culture, organization, accountability and ethics.

The purpose of this study was to identify the priorities for evaluation and development using the perceptions of a sample of participants in clinical audit in Scotland. Semi‐structured interviews were held in four health board areas. The study indicated that the priorities for evaluation were: 1) the validity of the measures used in audit; 2) communications — both top‐down, bottom‐up, and across units and professions; 3) the systematic approach to planning programmes and projects; 4) implementation of change; 5) showing the improvement in patient care by closing the audit loop.

There is an increasing recognition in the public audit profession that the emergence of big data as well as the growing use of business analytics by audit clients has brought new opportunities and challenges. That is, should more complex business analytics beyond the customary analytical procedures be used in the engagement and if so, where? Which techniques appear to be most promising? This paper starts the process of addressing these questions by examining extant external audit research. 301 papers are identified that discuss some use of analytical procedures in the public audit engagement. These papers are then categorized by technique, engagement phase, and other attributes to facilitate understanding. This analysis of the literature is categorized into an External Audit Analytics (EAA) framework, the objective of which is to identify gaps, to provide motivation for new research, and to classify and outline the main topics addressed in this literature. Specifically, this synthesis organizes audit research, thereby offering guidelines regarding possible future research about approaches for more complex and data driven analytics in the engagement.

The need to develop manufacturing strategies which are consistent with and supportive of overall business strategies is now widely accepted. A manufacturing audit approach which has been found useful in the process of manufacturing strategy formulation is described. Within manufacturing strategy, the need for a manufacturing audit is identified and the current approaches to audit are reviewed. These existing approaches do not provide an adequate audit process for use in strategy formulation. A structured audit approach based on established frameworks is developed and preliminary results of its use are presented. The approach has been successfully used in several companies; however, there is need for further work in looking at the social aspects of the process.

The paper aims to review current practices of road safety audits worldwide, investigate the perceptions of experts on highway work zone safety in the USA and issues of adopting work zone safety audits in the country, and propose a framework for developing guidelines for implementing work zone safety audits for safety improvements.

The paper was conducted by reviewing the existing literature of road safety audits and administering four‐week questionnaire surveys of experts on highway work zone safety in the USA.

Road safety audits have been successfully adopted worldwide to maximize safety of the roadway environment for highway users. The questionnaire surveys have clarified leading causes of work zone safety problems and effective countermeasures, types of projects suitable for auditing and audit frequencies, audit team composition and funding sources, audit tasks and tools, and project staff safety training audits. A similar procedure for road safety audits could be adopted for work zone safety audits with emphasis on mitigating work zone safety impacts.

Additional survey participants from the highway user group may add valuable insights into the use of highway work zone safety audits for safety improvements.

The paper findings would assist in preparing strategies and methodologies for developing the national highway work zone safety audit guidelines in the USA.

The work zone safety audit guidelines to be developed could help transportation practitioners effectively conduct work zone safety audits for safety improvements in the country.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accounts (AICPA) and the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) encourage experiential learning as a component of accounting and business curriculum. This chapter introduces a business partnership framework for experiential learning in accounting information systems, internal control, and auditing courses. Accounting students establish a partnership with a business client at the beginning of their accounting information systems and internal control study and continue the learning approach through the first auditing course. The framework brings real-world experience to accounting information systems, internal control, and auditing concepts. Accounting students learn to solve unstructured problems in complex realistic business settings, integrating technical and experienced-based knowledge. The project provides a structure for strengthening students’ personal competencies including developing successful team behavior and professional skills. The author has used the business-partnership model effectively for 15 years.