Understanding internal auditors' roles in environmental auditing practices : a comparative analysis between alpha and beta

Abstract

Numerous environmental issues, including cleanliness, flash flood, rise of dengue cases, and waste management, have often flashed as the main headlines across Malaysian newspapers. Such issues are managed and monitored by Malaysian Local Governments (MLGs) administered under their respective State Governments. The uprising environmental issues reflect poor monitoring performance by MLGs on environmental activities and programmes that occur under their nose. Inherently, the abovementioned scenario denotes weak or inadequate environmental audit practices (EAP) that ascertain the efficacy of environmental programmes and activities organised by MLGs. As stipulated by the National Audit Department (NAD), auditing processes on related environmental programmes are only executed after five-year interval due to time and auditor constraints (Buang, 2007). As such, this present study had looked into the differences and similarities in EAPs between two MLGs (ALPHA and BETA), along with the roles of internal auditors in conducting EAPs for both MLGs. This qualitative study had captured data via review of heaps of documents, multiple interviews, and vast informal observations. The case study approach was employed with a single unit analysis, and followed by the multiple case study design on ALPHA and BETA. Three perspectives; functional, interactionist, and cognitive, were described from the lens of role theory, which was initiated by Katz and Kahn (1978). As a result, this study revealed that the internal auditors constructed their roles through the following three processes: developing expectation, establishing the interaction platform, and responding to the implementation of EAPs. It was discovered that the EAPs in ALPHA were more efficient in light of expectation development particularly due to six criteria, namely: initiator of EAP, coverage of the audit, composition of the audit team, involvement of the quality officer, audit checklist, and reporting the audit findings. Next, the interactionist perspective was probed into through the lens of the role theory to describe the interaction platform in EAPs developed by the internal auditors. Accordingly, it was found that normal audit processes (e.g., annual work plan, training, letter or memorandum of audit, exit meetings, and review meeting of audit) and Management Committee Meeting served as the interaction platforms in enabling EAPs. Additionally, the roles of secretariat of audit, technology, and meeting attendees can be enhanced to improve the interaction mechanism between internal auditors and auditees. Based on the cognitive perspective in light of the role theory, as prescribed by Mantere (2008), this study affirms that internal auditors function as protector in BETA and problem solver in ALPHA.