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Discussion of

The Acceptance and Adoption ofContinuous Auditing by Internal

Auditors:A Micro Analysis

Douglas Havelka

Farmer School of Business

Miami University

Farmer School of BusinessFarmer School of Business Overview

• Valuable and Important Topic

• Constant pressure to improve audit effectiveness and efficiency

• Identify potential constructs/concepts that may be used to determine the “stage” of an organization’s CA efforts

• These could be used to move organizations to higher levels of maturity

• Evidence of level of CA adoption in practice

• Both academic and practitioner support for importance• 2006 PWC survey 80% have or plan to use• 50% have

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• Room for improvement

• More literature support for case study research (Yin, Eisenhardt)

• More fully develop the audit maturity model (explain)

• Theoretical development via data analysis

Farmer School of BusinessFarmer School of Business Data Analysis

Constant comparative analysis based on Grounded Theory approach (others are available).

1. Theoretical sampling, gathering the data

2. Open coding, identify “incidents” as atomic unit of analysis

3. Theoretical coding, concept emergence, incidents as indicators of concepts – common themes or semantic notion, category as higher level abstraction

4. Selective coding: delimiting the theory, identify core categories, relationships are proposed

5. Achieve saturation: Substantiation through literature or further data collection and testing

Farmer School of BusinessFarmer School of Business Example

• Example of incidents, codes, concepts, and category

• Note: transcription questions not the same as those presented in the APP.

Farmer School of BusinessFarmer School of BusinessSome additional

comments• Clarify the purpose

1. Examine the status, evaluate development, assess use

2. How CA being implemented

3. Perceived usefulness, EOU, and cost/benefit of CA

4. Identify barriers and drivers of CA adoption

5. Understand current state of the art

6. Experience and motivations of firms

7. Understand factors that shaped acceptance

8. Provide perspective … development of metric for adoption

9. Where in the product life cycle CA is

10. Type of CA being used today

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• Why TAM?• not used in analysis/results

• Clarify what you consider CA to be:• Concept• Technology• Practice• Methodology• Product

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• Describe and explain the Audit Maturity Model more fully• Is this your conception?

• Better define the selection criteria for firms and participants• What is a “leading global business”?• This definitely impacts your results

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• Need some explanation of the “data” analysis• Currently no description at all• Some non-parametric statistics possible

• Explain how the results were obtained• How was each issued identified?• The presentation can be better organized

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• Does your results support the AMM? Or not?

• In conclusion factors not previously discussed• Management support and employee

knowledge?• SOX compliance

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• Evidence of adoption at all firms, but not maturity• So, does not necessarily discount the industry

surveys

• Very rich set of data• Even more value can be achieved

• (manuscript needs cleaning)

Farmer School of BusinessFarmer School of Business Good Work!