Internal audit: from effectiveness to organizational significance

From the perspective of two groups of governance actors, this paper aims to understand how internal audit (IA) achieves and consolidates organizational significance.

Interviews were conducted with audit committee chairs and chief audit executives from multinational corporations, and the participating corporations’ registration documents were analyzed.

The data indicate that IA achieves and consolidates organizational significance by activating the IA effectiveness “building blocks” (Lenz et al., 2014) all together so as to generate organizational learning and positive change. New IA effectiveness drivers also emerged from the field.

This research contributes to the IA literature by establishing a connection, through the IA impact on organizational learning, between the constructs of IA effectiveness and organizational significance. It also contributes to the IA literature by identifying new drivers and illustrating the complementarity and interconnections between the IA effectiveness building blocks.

This paper encourages internal auditors to keep their eyes on the prize (i.e. organizational significance) instead of simply being focused on the mean (i.e IA effectiveness), in order to fight stakeholder disappointment.

The paper proposes a conceptual model of IA organizational significance and gives key insights for setting up effective IA to stimulate organizational learning and fostering positive change in the whole organization.