Value for money is becoming increasing important in the current NHS climate. The Audit Commission, a statutory body appointed to provide an external audit service for the NHS in England and Wales, aims to work with audited bodies to identify economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the services offered by the NHS to help improve patient care.

We investigate the relationship of audit fees, outside directors and firms’ ownership, marketing and asset structures as alternative (external versus internal) monitoring mechanisms that can be used to control incentive conflicts in costly contracting environments, by exploiting variation in ownership within the Australian and UK life insurance industries. In mutuals, ownership rights are not t...

The aim of this study is to examine the socio-economic, institutional, and political factors affecting external audit, with use an international comparison. In addition, effect audit on fiscal transparency was analyzed. Although many empirical studies in literature handle transparency, there are only a few that focus impact audits transparency. However, not one dealing through making comparison...

This study assesses factors influencing Internal Audit Quality (IAQ) in Greece. Hand-collected data were obtained from 2013 and 2014 annual financial reports from companies such as food industries, beverage –and their subcategoriesindustries as well as fishing and distillation, listed in Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). Previous literature was chosen in order to highlight significant independent va...

The turbulent events of the global financial crises have highlighted the importance of audit quality. Auditing in today’s business environment involves navigating through organizational information technology (IT) landscape dominated by ERP systems. Organizations depend on ERP systems for financial reporting which involve dealing with statutory and regulatory provisions. ERP systems thus, have ...

This article describes the introduction of quality improvement actions in a public health organization. After ISO 17025 accreditation, which was legally mandated, was granted to the official control laboratory, the management decided to expand a quality policy in 2003, through a series of actions based on process analysis and proposals for improvement, further definition of standard operating p...