| Summary: | 碩士 === 世新大學 === 傳播管理學研究所(含碩專班) === 96 === In recent years, unusual events such as maladministration, financial crisis, and phony annual reports happened repeatedly in enterprises, which showed that internal auditing doesn’t perform its real function within enterprises. Although the chief institution has enhanced internal audit’s legitimate status in enterprises, internal auditors who play the roles as enterprises’ gatekeepers are rarely probed into the issues of their internal image and internal relationship. In previous years, it had been observed that most researchers inclined to probe into some respects such as internal audit’s duties and its functionality, and work performance. However, no research is found which studies the issue of the internal auditors’ images, hence inspiring us to study this issue.
The main purpose of this study is to explore the internal auditors’ images considered by the interviewees. The ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique) proposed by Professor Zaltman of Harvard Business School in 1990s was adopted in this study.
Twelve employees from 8 TV stations who had been audited were interviewed to probe into their real cognition toward the internal auditors’ images, to know their real inner feelings and thoughts in their hearts, and to explore the psychological path that had built up these feelings and thoughts. Through the constructs made by the interviewees’ cognition toward the internal auditors’ images, and by connecting the causal relationship between these constructs, we extracted their cognitive constructs of value formed previously in the audit processes such as contacting with, interacting with, observing, discussing with and analyzing with the internal auditors. Then we built up the interviewees’ real thought and role expectations toward the internal auditors. Besides, connections between constructs and constructs are formed, to induce the interviewees’ common value (Consensus Map) in their cognition toward the internal auditors’ images, in order to achieve the purpose of this study. This study is different from general in-depth interviews which are based on the researchers’ own thought structure (For example, the content of the questionnaire is designed according to the researcher’s ideas, or the host takes the leading role directing the questions in a specific direction during a focus interview) and lets the interviewees express their views by answering the questions. In the foregoing method, the interviewees are easily led by the researcher’s subjective judgment, and the interviewees are likely to try to express their more positive images; they may not tell the truth, or they may talk vaguely.
In this study, we’ve found that when the 12 interviewees mentioned positive images, 13 important constructs (maps) were obtained; through arrangements, 3 core Consensus Constructs are extracted, which are: “profession”, “feedback”, and ”sensitive observation”. And then, according to the inferior images mentioned by the 12 interviewees, 19 important constructs (maps) are extracted; through arrangements, 3 core Consensus Constructs are extracted, and they are: “not detached enough”,” alone” and “authoritative”.
In practice, most people who never have contact with the internal auditors have little understanding about the nature of the job of the internal auditor, its function, and importance. Especially in business-oriented enterprises, the upper management considers the internal audit unit to belong to the cost unit, not the profit-making unit; therefore, not very many people are assigned to these units, and these people belong to minority groups in enterprises. Hence, sometimes the situation occurs that an employee in a business department surpasses an auditor. Such a situation is the main reason that makes internal auditors powerless and makes the exertion of audit’s function result in inferior image. Such inferior image in cognitive structure can be verified in this study. Meanwhile, it is not difficult to understand why unusual events happened repeatedly in enterprises in recent years, and why the internal auditors who play the role as gatekeepers didn’t exert their function truly. This study has also proposed some practice suggestions according to the result of analysis.
|
|---|
