تاثیر قانون گذاری بر نقش حسابرسی داخلی The impact of legislation on the internal audit function

Introduction Today, business organizations are constantly bombarded by many different constellations of change, including challenges and risks in the environment (Sarens and De Beelde, 2006). As organizations operate to carry out their mission, they are exposed to threats and opportunities that can either bolster their growth or bring about their demise. How an organization deals with change and understands its capacity to address the change is a critical factor for its survival. While there are many factors that could impact the organization, this study focuses on the burgeoning role and changing responsibility of the Internal Audit Function (IAF) as a behavioral response to the environmental change factor of regulation. Therefore, when major changes in regulations occur, pressures can cause organizations to adjust their structures, processes and strategies (Haveman et al., 2001). This study addresses the following research question, “How does the environmental change factor of regulation bring about a shift in the Internal Audit Function’s Role in the organization post-SOX?” Several studies have focused on management accounting changes from a broad-based perspective across organizational sectors (Burns and Baldvinsdottir, 2005; Quattrone and Hopper, 2001; 2005; Sulaiman and Mitchell, 2005), but only a few have concentrated on the impact of change within the organization. However, there is one particular study (Burns and Scapens, 2000) that is part of a novel trend that analyzes management accounting changes and practices within the organization as a process using the Old Institutional Economics (OIE) Downloaded by Australian Catholic University At 12:09 24 September 2017 (PT) 2 | P a g e component of institutional theory (Ribeiro and Scapens, 2006). Thus, this study attempts to explain this recent shift in the IAF’s roles and responsibilities through interviews conducted with chief audit executives (CAEs) in eight organizations as a function of environmental change resulting from the external pressure of regulation. This study contributes to the literature by extending the work of Burns and Scapens (2000) and Seo and Creed (2002) by developing a new Two-Tiered Organizational Change Framework, which serves as a useful tool to analyze and explain the institutional change in the IAF. The following sections discuss the background literature, theoretical foundation and the research question; the methodology employed; the findings and a discussion of the findings and implications for future research.