A Review of Internal Audit Research Using Topic Modeling

According to the variety and diversity of research conducted in the field of internal auditing, the purpose of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of the topic by conducting a systematic review of existing studies to classify topics and outline some potential future research directions.

In order to achieve our purpose and to more efficiently examine a large number of articles, the "Computational Literature Review (CLR)" approach is used, and through this, the content of abstracts is analyzed automatically to provide a set of research topics within internal audit literature (Topic Modeling). The required information is collected from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science (WoS) database for 1401 articles over almost one hundred years (1920 to 2021).

The results of Topic Modeling show the focus of seven areas in internal audit research as follows: internal audit in the healthcare industry; internal audit in the areas of risk management, fraud, and internal controls; competence and training and internal audit quality; and the relationship between the external auditor and the internal auditor. A separate review of each of these identified issues related to internal audit reveals the most critical research conducted in this area and identifies some avenues for future research.

The results of this study indicate that throughout the evolution of internal auditing during its history (almost 100 years), its philosophy has evolved from ensuring the accuracy of financial statements and accounts and preventing the misuse of corporate funds or assets by helping to create and add value to companies. Internal auditing services have been upgraded from assuring financial statements and responding to its limited stakeholders (i.e., senior managers), giving assurance, consulting, forecasting risk, and being accountable to all stakeholders. Also, the change in the accountability direction of internal audit and its greater cooperation with external auditors, and the growth of technology and increasing the complexity of organizations have led to changes in competencies and skills required and improving and promoting its independence and objectivity; also engaging internal auditors in other areas of expertise (other than accounting and auditing), then it is expected that the trend will continue in the future.