The (mis)fit between the profile of internal auditors and internal audit activities

Abstract

This study investigates whether there is a fit between the profile of internal auditors and the activities of the internal audit department (IAD). It also seeks to discover which type of internal auditors fit which type of internal audit (IA) activities. This is commonly referred to as the person-job (P-J) fit. Furthermore, this study investigates whether this (mis)fit is associated with the outsourcing/co-sourcing of IA activities and turnover within the IAD. Bringing strategic human resource management (SHRM) into IA can be considered as the key contribution of this paper. The results of this study are based on a questionnaire completed by 280 members of the Institute of Internal Auditors in Belgium. The results show that there is a fit between some characteristics of internal auditors working in an IAD and the activities of the IAD. The results also show that certain internal auditor characteristics fit with certain types of IA activities. However, the degree of fit varies. Furthermore, it was found that IADs that co-source/outsource were significantly more associated with a misfit between the profile of the internal auditors and the activities of the IAD, whereas a misfit was not significantly associated with a high turnover of internal auditors.

Keywords:

• internal audit
• person-job fit
• internal audit co-sourcing
• internal audit outsourcing
• internal audit staff turnover

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at the 10th European Academic Conference on Internal Audit and Corporate Governance (Verona, April 2012) and the 35th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association (Ljubljana, May 2012). We thank all conference participants who provided us with their feedback and input. We also want to thank Jonas Vermeulen for helping us with the data collection.