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Following the international trend, the enterprises must go global. Meanwhile, managers have to understand the cultural differences of different countries and respect their thinking modes in order to set internal control policies and guidelines in line with local practice and helpful to growing business. Internal auditing is also conducted in subsidiaries located in different countries according to yearly auditing plan as overseas business expanding. Therefore, before starting auditing, the auditors must get to know the culture and thinking modes of parties to be audited. This can help auditors communicate appropriately with the parties and let them accept the auditors’ advices for improvement.
The purpose of this study is to construct cross-cultural internal auditing procedure through the real practices of auditing in 5 different countries. We used the “narrative analysis” and “comparative analysis” to investigate the 4 stages of internal auditing cases including 1. Plan auditing, 2. Collect and evaluate information, 3. Communicate auditing result, and 4. Follow-up. The study covered 10 auditing cases and we briefed cross-cultural findings and suggestions in the basis of them.
When conducting cross-cultural internal auditing, auditors have to set their mind in accordance with the situation meanwhile understanding the culture and showing respect. We believe the conclusions we made can help auditors successfully complete cross-cultural auditing tasks and those audited improve their internal control environment and enhance internal auditing value.
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