DETERMINANTS OF INTERNAL AUDIT FUNCTION: A STUDY OF GOVERNMENT SECTORS IN BGRS, ETHIOPIA

The core purpose of the present study is to scrutinize determinants of internal audit performance in public sectors. This study tried to enlighten stakeholders’ perceptions about internal audit performance based on the measures of competence of auditors, size of internal audit department, relationship between internal and external auditors, independence of internal audit, and extent of management support for the internal audit function. The major findings of this piece of study uncover that the agreement of the respondents over the current status of the stated measures and their respective contribution to the effectiveness of Internal Audit function is very low. Among the stated measures, only ‘Internal Audit Independence’ and ‘Internal and External Auditors relationship’ are showing very strong positive correlation with Internal Audit Effectiveness. A weak negative insignificant correlation has also been observed between ‘Size of the Internal Audit Department’ and the ‘Effectiveness of the Internal Audit’. Among all the independent variables, ‘Independency of Internal Audit Team’ and ‘Relationship between Internal and External Auditors’ and ‘Competency of the Internal Audit Team’ are strongly determining the Effectiveness of Internal Audit.