Purpose This study is motivated by the lack of internal audit function (IAF) research and by the call for research on the impact of dominant owners such as family shareholders on audit fees and the demand for audit quality. This study aims to examine the impact of the IAF budget on the selection of industry-specialist auditors and on audit fees, particularly in companies with family-controlled shareholders, a feature unique to Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach Data of Malaysian-listed companies during the period 2009-2012 are used. To examine the relationships, logit and ordinary least square regressions are used. Several additional analyses are conducted to assess the robustness of the main results, including alternative measures of specialist auditor and family ownership, endogeneity problems and self-selection bias. Findings The results show that the IAF budget is positively related to hiring industry-specialist auditors and audit fees. However, family companies are less likely to support the positive association between IAF costs and engage specialist auditors than non-family companies. In addition, a complementary association between the costs of IAF and audit fees for both family and non-family companies was found. Finally, the results show that there is a negative association between family ownership and the ratio of IAF costs to audit fees, suggesting that family companies rely more upon external auditing than internal auditing. Originality/value The contribution of this study is to provide an empirical evidence about the tradeoff between IAF and both industry-specialist auditors and audit fees with considering the moderating impact of family-ownership shareholdings. This issue is yet to be examined, and it provides implications for policymakers and practitioners, as it offers insights into the importance of investing in IAF toward hiring industry-specialist auditors and pricing the audit services.

中文翻译：

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内部审计职能预算对专业审计师选择和审计费用的困惑

目的本研究的动机是缺乏内部审计职能（IAF）的研究，并且呼吁就诸如家族股东等主要所有者对审计费用和对审计质量的要求的影响进行研究。这项研究旨在研究IAF预算对选择行业专家审计师和审计费用的影响，特别是在具有家族控股股东的公司中，这是马来西亚独有的功能。设计/方法/方法使用了马来西亚上市公司在2009-2012年期间的数据。为了检查这些关系，使用了logit和普通最小二乘回归。进行了一些其他分析，以评估主要结果的稳健性，包括专业审核员和家族拥有权的其他衡量方式，内生性问题和自我选择偏见。结果结果表明，IAF预算与聘用行业专家审核员和审核费用呈正相关。但是，与非家族企业相比，家族企业不太可能支持IAF成本之间的正相关关系并聘请专业审计师。此外，IAF的成本与家族企业和非家族企业的审计费用之间存在互补关系。最后，结果表明，家族所有权与IAF成本与审计费用的比率之间存在负相关关系，这表明家族企业更多地依赖外部审计而不是内部审计。独创性/价值本研究的目的是提供有关IAF与行业专家审计师和审计费用之间的权衡的经验证据，同时考虑家族股权的适度影响。这个问题有待研究，它为决策者和从业者带来了启示，因为它提供了对投资IAF对聘用行业专家审计师并为审计服务定价的重要性的见解。